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A new experimental mechanism to investigate polarized demands for public goods: the effects of censoring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

R. Mark Isaac Open the ORCID record for R. Mark Isaac [Opens in a new window] ,
Douglas A. Norton  and
Svetlana Pevnitskaya
R. Mark Isaac*
Affiliation:
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Douglas A. Norton
Affiliation:
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Svetlana Pevnitskaya
Affiliation:
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
*
misaac@fsu.edu
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Abstract

Many social dilemmas involve deciding among alternative public goods, and include cases where part of the population may dislike a particular option. In such cases, an agent may want to spend resources to oppose or reduce the provision of the option they don’t like. We propose the generalized voluntary contributions mechanism (GVCM), which allows allocating resources to increase or decrease the level of public good. Our main treatment variables include two versions of the GVCM (uncensored, or censored at positive provision). We study performance of GVCM for various compositions of the polarized preferences. We find that uncensoring the mechanism does not impose net efficiency costs and leads to more diversity in the provision of the public good. The nature of efficiency loss is more complex compared to standard VCM and is not driven by free riding.

Keywords

Public goodsGeneralized voluntary contributions mechanismExperimental economicsSocial dilemmas

JEL classification

H41: Public Goods C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior D70: General C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior C70: General
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 22 , Issue 3: Special Issue in Honor of Charles R. Plott , September 2019 , pp. 585 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-018-9593-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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