POWRE: Individual Motives For Giving

该项目包括一系列受控实验室实验，旨在研究个人对提供公共产品的贡献，如公园，游乐场，清洁空气或国防。 经济学家观察到，平均而言，人们对这些公共产品的贡献比纯粹自利的个人最大化自己的单轮货币收入所预测的要多。 对这一现象的分析几乎完全集中在总体行为上，使用规模从4人到100人不等的群体的平均贡献作为其主要衡量标准。 虽然这对贡献行为产生了重要的见解，但它忽略了这些群体中个体行为的丰富性和多样性。 这个项目的目的是设计实验，使人们能够更好地分析这种个人贡献行为。 最近的理论工作已经指出，实验治疗（如公共产品的价值，贡献的成本，群体规模和个人资源禀赋）的影响，预计对贡献的其他动机（利他主义，错误，和信号，例如）被认为是。在这个项目中，研究人员将设计和运行实验，其中这些因素在一个单一的会议期间为个人而变化。 然后研究了这些处理对个人贡献行为的影响，并与几种贡献行为模型的预测进行了比较。 还将开发一个跨期信号行为模型：个人可以在当前回合中做出贡献，以表示愿意在未来回合中“合作”。 传统的经济学理论假设个人是纯粹的利己主义者和理性的：他们最大化自己的收入，而忽略了他们的决定对他人福利的影响。 然而，公益物为其他人提供了额外的好处。 如果一个人忽视了这种额外的好处（正如传统理论所预测的那样），那么从社会的角度来看，公共利益就太少了。 在最极端的情况下，公共利益根本不会被提供，即使提供公共利益符合每个人的最佳利益。 这是政府提供某些公共产品的一个理由：市场将无法提供（或将提供低效率的低水平）公共产品，因此外部干预是强制性的。先前的研究已经证明，这种完全的市场失灵并不存在：公共产品既可以在自然发生的环境中提供（例如，对慈善事业的贡献被广泛观察到），也可以在受控的实验室实验中提供。 然而，所提供的货物数量通常低于社会最佳值。这项研究对那些依赖私人捐款支持的机构和组织有影响。 通过重点关注促进或抑制合作的因素，并查明个人捐助的各种动机的普遍性，这可能使非营利组织和其他组织能够更好地确定其筹资努力的目标。 也可以评估政府直接提供某些公益物的替代办法。 这项研究补助金将允许研究人员计划她的研究议程，进行试点实验，开发新的理论模型，并分析试点实验的结果。 她目前在南卡罗来纳州大学担任联合职务：在经济学系担任终身职位，在工商管理学院管理南卡罗来纳州经济预测服务。 她的研究职位的职责带走的时间和注意力，她可以支付给她的学术研究的公共产品提供问题。 美国国家科学基金会的支持将是非常宝贵的，帮助她专注于她的终身职位跟踪研究目标，从而将推动她的学术生涯。

This project consists of a series of controlled laboratory experiments designed to examine individual contributions to the provision of public goods, such as parks, playgrounds, clean air, or national defense. Economists have observed that on average people contribute more to these public goods than predicted for purely self-interested individuals maximizing their own single-round monetary earnings. The analysis of this phenomenon has focused almost exclusively on aggregate behavior, using as its predominant measure the average contributions by groups ranging in size from four through 100. While this has yielded important insights into contribution behavior, it ignores the richness and diversity of the individual behavior within these groups. The purpose of this project is to design experiments that allow one to better analyze this individual contribution behavior. Recent theoretical work has pointed toward the effects that experimental treatments (such as the value of the public good, the cost of contributing, group size and individual resource endowment) are predicted to have on contributions when other motives for giving (altruism, errors, and signaling for example) are considered. In this project the investigator will design and run experiments in which these factors are varied for individuals during a single session. The effects of these treatments on individuals' contribution behavior are then studied, and compared with the predictions of several models of contribution behavior. A model of intertemporal signaling behavior will also be developed: an individual may contribute in the current round in order to signal a willingness to `cooperate` in future rounds. Traditional economic theory assumes that individuals are purely self-interested and rational: they maximize their own earnings and ignore the impact of their decisions on others' welfare. Public goods, however, provide an additional benefit to others. If an individual ignores this additional benefit (as traditional theory predicts) then too little of the public good will be provided from society's point of view. In the most extreme situation, the public good will not be provided at all, even when it is in everyone's best interest to provide the good. This is one justification for government provision of some public goods: the market will fail to provide (or will provide inefficiently low levels of) a public good and thus outside intervention is mandated. Previous research has demonstrated that such a complete market failure does not occur: public goods are provided both in naturally-occurring settings (contributions to charity are widely observed, for example) and in controlled laboratory experiments. However, the amount of the good provided is typically less than the social optimum. This research has implications for agencies and organizations that rely upon private donations for their support. By focusing on those factors that foster or inhibit cooperation, and identifying the prevalence of various motives for contributing among individuals, this may allow non-profits and other organizations to better target their fund-raising efforts. Alternatives to direct government provision of some public goods may also be assessed. This POWRE research grant will allow the investigator to plan her research agenda, conduct pilot experiments, develop a new theoretical model, and analyze the results of pilot experiments. She currently hold a joint position at the University of South Carolina: half-time with a tenure track position in the department of economics and a half-time research position managing the South Carolina economic forecasting service for the College of Business Administration. Her duties for the research position take away from the time and attention she can pay to her academic research on the public goods provision problem. The support of the National Science Foundation will be invaluable in helping her to focus on her tenure track research objectives and thus will advance her academic career.