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Morally monotonic choice in public good games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

James C. Cox ,
Vjollca Sadiraj  and
Susan Xu Tang
James C. Cox*
Affiliation:
Experimental Economics Center and Department of Economics, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Vjollca Sadiraj*
Affiliation:
Experimental Economics Center and Department of Economics, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Susan Xu Tang*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

Rational choice theory, including models of social preferences, is challenged by decades of robust data from public good games. Provision of public goods, funded by lump-sum taxation, does not crowd out private provision on a one-for-one basis. Provision games elicit more of a public good than payoff-equivalent appropriation games. This paper offers a morally monotonic choice theory that incorporates observable moral reference points and is consistent with the two empirical findings. The model has idiosyncratic features that motivate a new experimental design. Data from our new experiment and three previous experiments favor moral monotonicity over alternative models including rational choice theory, prominent belief-based models of kindness, and popular reference-dependent models with loss aversion.

Keywords

Public goodsExperimentPayoff equivalenceNon-binding contractionsRational choiceMorally monotonic choiceBelief-based kindness choiceReference-dependent choice with loss aversion

JEL classification

H41: Public Goods C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 697 - 725
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Economic Science Association 2023.

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Footnotes

Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-022-09787-2.

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