What drives conditional cooperation in public good games?

Abstract Extensive experimental research on public good games documents that many subjects are “conditional cooperators” in they positively correlate their contribution with (their belief about) contributions of other peer group. The goal our study is to shed light what preference and decision-making patterns drive this observed regularity. We consider reciprocity, conformity, inequality aversion residual factors, such as confusion anchoring, potential explanations. Effects these drivers separated by varying how others’ determined the informational content conditioning variable across treatments. Assuming additive separability effects four drivers, we find that, average conditionally cooperative behavior, at least 40 percent driven factors. For remainder, most accounted for aversion, some conformity very little reciprocity. These findings carry an important message interpret conditional cooperation lab. also discuss mean understanding fundraising applications field.