LIMITS OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL INFORMATION ON THE VOLUNTARY PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS: EVIDENCE FROM FIELD EXPERIMENTS |
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| Authors: | RACHEL CROSON JEN SHANG |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Croson: Professor, Department of Economics, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080. Phone 972‐883‐6016, Fax 972‐883‐6016, E‐mail crosonr@utdallas.edu;2. Shang: Assistant Professor, Center on Philanthropy, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN 46202. Phone 812‐856‐0366, Fax 812‐855‐7802, E‐mail jenshang@indiana.edu |
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| Abstract: | ![]()
Previous work has demonstrated the effect of social information in the voluntary provision of public goods in the field. In this article, we demonstrate the boundary conditions of the effect. We show that when social information is too extreme, it ceases to influence individual contributions. The results highlight a natural limitation of the social information effect, and provide a characterization of the most effective levels for an organization to use. (JEL M31, H41, D64) |
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