A lot of crises provide an opportunity to build back better than the situation was beforehand. Studies on social dilemmas generally overlook this opportunity. In an experimental study, we compare a...Show moreA lot of crises provide an opportunity to build back better than the situation was beforehand. Studies on social dilemmas generally overlook this opportunity. In an experimental study, we compare a public-good model where participants can turn a negative externality into a positive one with two more traditional models. By increasing the initial negative externality, we assess the effect of increasingly severe crises on cooperation. Our results indicate that participants contribute more in a condition where they can turn a negative situation into a positive one than they do in a condition where they can only reduce the impact of the negative situation. More importantly, increasing the turning point does not impact contributions in such a transformation model while it does in more traditional models. We conclude that cooperation during crises is fundamentally different when people have the opportunity to turn the crises into something positive.Show less
Introduction. In this study we set out to find out the effect of amount of information about others’ decisions in a volunteer’s dilemma (VOD) game and whether people higher on social value...Show moreIntroduction. In this study we set out to find out the effect of amount of information about others’ decisions in a volunteer’s dilemma (VOD) game and whether people higher on social value orientation (SVO) volunteer more often than people low on SVO. We hypothesized that people with no information about others’ decisions would volunteer more often than those with some information. Further, we hypothesized that people high on SVO would volunteer more often than low SVO people. Methods. Participants in groups of three were asked to perform our version of the VOD game, where they had to either give up five of their 10 points for the group to gain a reward. Not volunteering by anyone would end in everyone getting no rewards. Not volunteering in a group with at least one other volunteer in the group would yield the highest reward. Further, they were asked to fill out an SVO questionnaire. Statistical analysis. We performed a crosstab with Chi-Square test on condition x volunteer yes/no for hypothesis one. For hypothesis 2 we performed an LRA on volunteering yes/no on the predictor SVO angle score. Results. Chi-square test for our first hypothesis was non-significant which suggests that amount of information has no effect on people’s decision to volunteer. Wald’s Chi-Square test for our second hypothesis was significant and the B-value was positive. This suggests that higher scores on SVO does indeed result in more volunteering behaviour.Show less
The present study explores the effect of externalities awareness and Social Value Orientation (SVO) in anticommons dilemmas. Making participants of an anticommons game aware of externalities was...Show moreThe present study explores the effect of externalities awareness and Social Value Orientation (SVO) in anticommons dilemmas. Making participants of an anticommons game aware of externalities was expected to increase cooperation, by decreasing their willingnessto-accept (WTA) values, i.e. the amount they would be willing to accept in order to allow other individuals to make use of the resource. The results of the computer-based anticommons game (N = 167) did not support this hypothesis. However, the results did show, as predicted, that the more prosocial participants were, the more easily they allowed access to the resource by setting lower willingness-to-accept (WTA) values. Additionally, the hypothesized interaction effect between externalities awareness and Social Value Orientation (SVO) was not confirmed. Proselfs’ behavior did not change significantly more than prosocials’, after they got aware of the externalities. Finally, the negative effects of uncertainty in cooperation are discussed.Show less
