Exploring the dynamics of collective action in heterogeneous groups

What is it about?

Many collective action problems take the form of a social dilemma. For example, in teamwork, members would prefer everyone to contribute a fair share, but each individual member may have an incentive to free ride on the others' contributions. These free rider problems may become even more severe in heterogeneous groups, where members differ in their ability to contribute. We perform economic experiments with a large sample of participants to study the role of different dimensions of heterogeneity. Individuals either differ in their endowments (their ability to contribute) or their productivity (the effectiveness of their contributions). Moreover, we study both linear games (where the rewards of the public good grow in proportion to contributions) and threshold games (where the team either succeeds or fails to obtain a reward). We find that unequal endowments can sometimes induce a positive cooperation dynamics in linear games. However, in threshold games, unequal endowments are always detrimental to cooperation.

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Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Collective action problems are at the core of many social interactions. These problems are aggravated in heterogeneous groups, where people may disagree on who should contribute, and how much. The study shows that the effect of heterogeneity is non-trivial. In some cases, heterogeneity can help cooperation (e.g., if more productive individuals have a larger endowment). But in many other cases it is detrimental.

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