Leveling up? An inter-neighborhood experiment on parochialism and the efficiency of multi-level public goods provision

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Carlo Gallier
  • Timo Goeschl
  • Martin Kesternich
  • Johannes Lohse
  • Christiane Reif
  • Daniel Römer

Many public goods can be provided at different spatial levels. Evidence from social identity theory and in-group favoritism raises the possibility that when higher-level provision is more efficient, subjects’ narrow concern for local outcomes could undermine efficiency. Building on the experimental paradigm of multi-level public good games and the concept of “neighborhood attachment,” we conduct an artefactual field experiment with over 600 participants in a setting conducive to routine parochial behavior. In an inter-neighborhood intra-region design, subjects allocate an endowment between a personal, a local, and a regional public good account. The between-subjects design crosses two treatment dimensions: One informs subjects that the smaller local group consists of members from their own neighborhood, while the other varies the relative productivity at the two public goods provision levels. We find evidence for parochialism, but contrary to our hypothesis, parochialism does not interfere with efficiency: The average subject responds to a change in relative productivities at the local and regional levels in the same way, whether they are aware of their neighbors’ presence in the small group or not. The results even hold for subjects with above-median neighborhood attachment and subjects primed on neighborhood attachment.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume164
Pages (from-to)500-517
Number of pages18
ISSN0167-2681
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 08.2019
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Financial support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FKZ 01UN1204A/C) is gratefully acknowledged. Further details can be obtained from http://kooperationen.zew.de/en/soko/homepage.html.

Funding Information:
Financial support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research ( FKZ 01UN1204A/C ) is gratefully acknowledged. Further details can be obtained from http://kooperationen.zew.de/en/soko/homepage.html .

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.

    Research areas

  • Artefactual field experiment, Multi-level public goods, Parochialism, Social identity
  • Economics

Recently viewed

Researchers

  1. Samuel Fadel

Publications

  1. Was gibt´s heute?
  2. The theory of socio-cultural evolution
  3. Ideological Foundations of Perceived Contract Breach Associated With Downsizing
  4. Linking socio-technical transition studies and organisational change management
  5. How selective are real wage cuts?
  6. Modernisierung und Partizipation
  7. From Claiming to Creating Value
  8. Towards greener and sustainable ionic liquids using naturally occurring and nature-inspired pyridinium structures
  9. Towards a Relational Materialism
  10. The representative turn in EU studies
  11. Optimising Patterns of Life Conduct
  12. Systematic distributions of interaction strengths across tree interaction networks yield positive diversity–productivity relationships
  13. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – Exploring teachers’ technology readiness profiles and its relation to their emotional state during COVID-19 emergency remote teaching
  14. rudimentäre Schreibung
  15. Umweltrechtsschutz in China
  16. Unplanned, Unanticipated and Unsupported?
  17. Entrepreneurship: the missing link for democratization and development in fragile nations?
  18. Liveness Formats
  19. Impacts of offshore wind farms on sediment structure and the water column during construction, and changes in bottom topography during the operation phase
  20. Shared Storybook Reading and Oral Language Development
  21. Digital Design Strategies
  22. New methods for the analysis of links between international firm activities and firm performance
  23. A comparative assessment of the transformation products of S-metolachlor and its commercial product Mercantor Gold® and their fate in the aquatic environment by employing a combination of experimental and in silico methods
  24. The Making of Urban Computing Environments
  25. Pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches to present-day English
  26. Path dependence of accountants: Why are they not involved in corporate sustainability?
  27. Learning Analytics
  28. Pragmatic Function of Twitter Handlers' Perspectives on Children Discourse in Nigeria.
  29. Technological change and the dynamics of industries, theoretical issues and empirical evidence from Dutch manufacturing
  30. Crack propagation in as-extruded and heat-treated mg-dy-nd-zn-zr alloy explained by the effect of lpso structures and their micro-and nanohardness
  31. Exploring the institutionalization of corporate responsibility
  32. The end of certainties
  33. Watch out, pothole! Featuring Road Damage Detection in an End-to-end System for Autonomous Driving
  34. Measuring mathematics competence in international and national large scale assessments
  35. A PD Fuzzy Control of a Nonholonomic Car-Like Robot for Drive Assistant Systems