Supporting efficiency or equality in an asymmetrical public goods game: What predicts these fairness principles?

Abstract

In general, research on social dilemmas has been focused on the behavior in social dilemmas. This paper contributes to a thin but growing set of literature on contribution norms that underlie this behavior. It researches whether field of study, gender, political orientation and nationality are predictors for contribution norms in asymmetrical social dilemmas. The contribution norms are established through the fairness principles which compares equality to efficiency. This paper used a computerized experiment from the experimental laboratory for sociology and Economics (ELSE) at Utrecht University. It had 192 participants divided over 8 sessions with 24 participants each. The analysis showed a significant relation between political orientation and contribution norms, meaning the more a person is on the left political side the more likely they are to support equality over efficiency. There were no other significant relations found. Furthermore, it is found that contribution norms explain behavior for a large part. This paper closes with proposals on how to better research the other hypotheses.