In this paper, we study a voluntary contribution mechanism with one-way communication. The relevance of one person's words is assessed by assigning exogenously the role of the "communicator" to one group member. Contrary to the view that the mutual exchange of promises is necessary for the cooperation-enhancing effect of communication, we ï¬nd that, compared to a standard voluntary contribution mechanism with no communication, one-way communication signiï¬cantly increases contributions and renders them stable over time. Moreover, the positive effects of one-way communication persist even when communication is one-shot.
article pub. typess JER
Research article
article languages JER
Englisch
article research fields JER
experimental economics
JEL-Classification for JER
C72 - Noncooperative Games ; C92 - Laboratory, Group Behavior ; H41 - Public Goods