Group Size and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence Utilizing Large Groups

Abstract

Subsequently published as: "Group Size and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence Utilizing Large Groups," Journal of Public Economics 54(1), 1994, 1-36.

"This paper presents new experimental evidence extending the investigation of free riding behavior in public goods provision. Experimental procedures are developed to deal with the logistical problems inherent in experiments involving many subjects. Data from Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiments are reported utilizing group sizes of 4, 10, 40, and 100. These experiments provide replicable results which contradict the widely held view that a group's ability to provide the optimal level of a pure public good is inversely related to group size. On the contrary,groups of size 40 an d100 provided the public good more efficiently than groups of size 4 and 10. Several possible alternative explanations are provided for the inconsistency between these results and the predictions of the standard complete information Nash equilibrium model."