Thankful or Thankless: Does the Past’s Altruism Increase the Present’s Public Good Contributions?
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Methodology
2.1. Experimental Design
2.2. Game and Predictions
3. Hypotheses
Procedures
4. Results
4.1. Main Results
4.2. Other Results
5. Discussion
5.1. Intergenerational and Transnational Effect
5.2. Experimental Design Caveats
6. Concluding Remarks
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. Instructions
Appendix A.1. Experiment Instructions (PG-T0G)
- The total group investment in the Group Account?
- Your earnings from the Group Account?
- Your total earnings?
Appendix A.2. Experiment Instructions (PG-T1G)
- Which set are you assigned to?
- Suppose you kept 6 tokens and your other group members invested 32 tokens in the Group Account. What is:
- (a)
- The total group investment in the Group Account?
- (b)
- Your earnings from the Group Account?
- (c)
- Your total earnings?
- If a group in SET A invested all their tokens to the Group Account, what is for the matched group in SET B?
Appendix A.3. Experiment Instructions (PG-T2G)
- Which set are you assigned to?
- Suppose you kept 6 tokens and your other group members invested 32 tokens in the Group Account. What is:
- (a)
- The total group investment in the Group Account?
- (b)
- Your earnings from the Group Account?
- (c)
- Your total earnings?
- If a group in SET A invested all their tokens to the Group Account, what is for the matched group in SET B?
Appendix B. Decision Sheets
Appendix B.1. Baseline Treatments
Appendix B.2. Set A: Institutions and Endowments Treatments
Appendix B.3. Set B: Institutions Treatment
Appendix B.4. Set B: Endowments Treatment
Appendix C. Survey Questionnaire
- Subject ID Number:
- Age:
- Gender:
- □
- Female
- □
- Male
- Are you a student?
- □
- Yes
- □
- No
- Field of Study:
- Highest Educational Attainment:
- Marital Status
- □
- Single
- □
- Co-habiting
- □
- Married
- □
- Widowed
- Number of Children:
- Do you believe that individuals in Denmark and Spain had the same experiment you had?
- □
- Yes
- □
- No
Not at all willing to take risks | Very willing to take risks |
0 | 10 | ||||||||
□ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
Strongly agree | Kind of agree | Kind of disagree | Strongly disagree | I don’t know | |
I like the Danes | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Danes can be trusted | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Danes are not very cooperative | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Danes care for nature | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Danes will not protect the habitats of migratory birds | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Danes are quite wealthy | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Danes do not care what happens to my country and my people | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
Strongly agree | Kind of agree | Kind of disagree | Strongly disagree | I don’t know | |
I like the Spaniards | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Spaniards can be trusted | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Spaniards are not very cooperative | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Spaniards care for nature | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Spaniards will not protect the habitats of migratory birds | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Spaniards are quite wealthy | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Spaniards do not care what happens to my country and my people | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
Strongly agree | Kind of agree | Kind of disagree | Strongly disagree | I don’t know | |
I like the Ghanaians | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Ghanaians can be trusted | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Ghanaians are not very cooperative | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Ghanaians care for nature | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Ghanaians will not protect the habitats of migratory birds | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Ghanaians are quite wealthy | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
I think Ghanaians do not care what happens to my country and my people | □ | □ | □ | □ | □ |
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1. | Tests show no statistically significant order effect in our results. |
2. | In our design, our participants made decisions as both “Set A” and “Set B” individuals. This introduces the possibility of a self-serving bias, where one could imagine that the same individual when deciding to contribute in “Set A” thinks that this might benefit her/himself in “Set B”. We made sure to inform participants that this would never be the case; however, one cannot exclude this as a possible motivational bias in the observed public good contributions. |
3. | To limit the complexity of the experimental design, we chose only to examine the influence of a positive feedback from a past generation. We acknowledge that this is a limitation of our design, as a negative feedback mechanism is a realistic possibility in the real world, which also have been studied previously in the literature [4]. |
4. | Two participants in Denmark, five participants in Spain and 3 participants in Ghana were no longer students at the time of the experiment. |
5. | Instructions were originally written in English, translated to Danish and Spanish and then re-translated to English by a different translator. |
6. | Contributions are also statistically significantly different between InsT and EndT. One-sided t-Tests show that past-generation individuals under InsT contributed more than past-generation individuals under EndT, . |
Denmark | |||
---|---|---|---|
Code | Treatment Name | # Sessions | # Participants |
BaseT | Baseline | 6 | 72 |
InsT | Institutions Treatment | 6 | 72 |
EndT | Endowments Treatment | 5 | 60 |
Spain | |||
Code | Treatment Name | # Sessions | # Participants |
BaseT | Baseline | 6 | 72 |
InsT | Institutions Treatment | 6 | 72 |
EndT | Endowments Treatment | 5 | 60 |
Ghana | |||
Code | Treatment Name | # Sessions | # Participants |
BaseT | Baseline | 6 | 72 |
InsT | Institutions Treatment | 6 | 72 |
EndT | Endowments Treatment | 5 | 60 |
Dependent Variable: Tokens Contributed | ||
---|---|---|
Simple (1) | Controls (2) | |
InsT | 1.1424 ** (0.4158) | 0.7229 ** (0.3261) |
EndT | 0.4979 (0.3837) | 2.2572 *** (0.4214) |
Constant | 7.6458 *** (0.2561) | −3.2526 (2.7702) |
R-squared | 0 | 0.06 |
N | 3600 | 3536 |
Controls | no | yes |
Dependent Variable: % Tokens Contributed | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pooled | Transnational Only | National Only | Pooled with Interaction | |||||
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | |
InsT | 0.0477 *** | 0.0397 ** | 0.0568 *** | 0.0453 ** | 0.0385 ** | 0.0335 | ||
(0.0147) | (0.0151) | (0.0154) | (0.0164) | (0.0167) | (0.0233) | |||
EndT | −0.027 | −0.0327 | −0.0175 | −0.0271 | −0.0365 ** | −0.0388 | ||
(0.0152) | (0.0170) | (0.0173) | (0.0202) | (0.0142) | (0.0211) | |||
BaseT * Trans | −0.0206 ** | −0.0206 ** | ||||||
(0.0083) | (0.0083) | |||||||
InsT * Nat | 0.0385 ** | 0.0303 | ||||||
(0.0167) | (0.0187) | |||||||
InsT * Trans | 0.0362 ** | 0.0285 | ||||||
(0.0123) | (0.0132) | |||||||
EndT * Nat | −0.0365 ** | −0.0415 ** | ||||||
(0.0142) | (0.0173) | |||||||
EndT * Trans | −0.0381 ** | −0.0445 ** | ||||||
(0.0146) | (0.0184) | |||||||
Constant | 0.3823 *** | −0.1249 | 0.3720 *** | −0.1057 | 0.3926 *** | −0.1435 | 0.3926 *** | −0.1146 |
(0.0128) | (0.1201) | (0.0141) | (0.1186) | (0.0128) | (0.1243) | (0.0128) | (0.1196) | |
R-Squared | 0.01 | 0.07 | 0.01 | 0.08 | 0.01 | 0.08 | 0.01 | 0.07 |
N | 3600 | 3536 | 1800 | 1768 | 1800 | 1768 | 3600 | 3536 |
Controls | no | yes | no | yes | no | yes | no | yes |
Dependent Variable: % Tokens Contributed | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Pooled | Transnational Only | National Only | |||
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (6) | |
MPCR | 0.2141 *** | 0.2464 ** | 0.1875 ** | 0.1824 ** | 0.1381 |
(0.0686) | (0.0806) | (0.0630) | (0.0769) | (0.0889) | |
Constant | 0.3050 *** | 0.2845 *** | −0.3501 ** | 0.3251 *** | −0.3738 ** |
(0.0318) | (0.0388) | (0.1553) | (0.0369) | (0.1648) | |
R-squared | 0 | 0.01 | 0.12 | 0 | 0.12 |
N | 2160 | 1080 | 1072 | 1080 | 1072 |
Controls | no | no | yes | no | yes |
Pooled | Transnational Only | National Only | |||
(7) | (8) | (9) | (10) | (11) | |
Endowment | −0.003 | −0.0024 | −0.0029 | −0.0035 ** | −0.0036 |
(0.0017) | (0.0020) | (0.0022) | (0.0014) | (0.0018) | |
Constant | 0.4392 *** | 0.4221 *** | 0.1402 | 0.4561 *** | 0.0883 |
(0.0436) | (0.0527) | (0.1285) | (0.0380) | (0.1252) | |
R-squared | 0 | 0 | 0.04 | 0 | 0.05 |
N | 1872 | 936 | 912 | 936 | 912 |
Controls | no | no | yes | no | yes |
Dependent Variable: % Tokens Contributed | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Denmark | Denmark | Spain | Spain | Ghana | Ghana | |
(1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | |
BaseT * Trans | −0.0361 ** | −0.0369 *** | −0.0243 *** | −0.0243 *** | −0.0243 *** | −0.0021 |
(0.0116) | (0.0099) | (0.0065) | (0.0074) | (0.0065) | (0.0222) | |
InsT * Nat | 0.0536 | 0.0571 | 0.0281 | 0.0282 | 0.0281 | −0.0025 |
(0.0511) | (0.0393) | (0.0212) | (0.0226) | (0.0212) | (0.0458) | |
InsT * Trans | 0.058 | 0.0616 | 0.0389 | 0.0392 | 0.0389 | −0.0191 |
(0.0443) | (0.0354) | (0.0216) | (0.0243) | (0.0216) | (0.0471) | |
EndT * Nat | −0.0943 | −0.0877 | 0.0152 | 0.0141 | 0.0152 | −0.0616 |
(0.0432) | (0.0446) | (0.0289) | (0.0354) | (0.0289) | (0.0422) | |
EndT * Trans | −0.0995 ** | −0.0927 ** | 0.0071 | 0.0058 | 0.0071 | −0.0557 |
(0.0384) | (0.0400) | (0.0251) | (0.0319) | (0.0251) | (0.0453) | |
Constant | 0.4743 *** | 0.3047 | 0.2236 *** | 0.193 | 0.2236 *** | 0.1288 |
(0.0280) | (0.1962) | (0.0208) | (0.1248) | (0.0208) | (0.3385) | |
R-Squared | 0.05 | 0.21 | 0 | 0.1 | 0 | 0.09 |
N | 1200 | 1174 | 1200 | 1168 | 1200 | 1014 |
Controls | no | yes | no | yes | no | yes |
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Abatayo, A.L.; Svenningsen, L.S.; Thorsen, B.J. Thankful or Thankless: Does the Past’s Altruism Increase the Present’s Public Good Contributions? Games 2020, 11, 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/g11010006
Abatayo AL, Svenningsen LS, Thorsen BJ. Thankful or Thankless: Does the Past’s Altruism Increase the Present’s Public Good Contributions? Games. 2020; 11(1):6. https://doi.org/10.3390/g11010006
Chicago/Turabian StyleAbatayo, Anna Lou, Lea Skræp Svenningsen, and Bo Jellesmark Thorsen. 2020. "Thankful or Thankless: Does the Past’s Altruism Increase the Present’s Public Good Contributions?" Games 11, no. 1: 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/g11010006