Festival Games: Inebriated and Sober Altruists

Abstract

We report a staged field experiment during three concerts in the South of Italy characterized by the same traditional music and a comparable average level of alcohol consumption by attendees. Individual blood alcohol concentration is measured with electronic breathalyzers. The experimental games are payoff-equivalent private property and common property trust games. We find that alcohol consumption is associated with less sharing in the private property game and lower efficiency in the common property game. There is a game-form effect for sober participants who share less in the common property game than in the private property game. This finding is consistent with revealed altruism theory as more sharing reveals more altruistic behavior. The absence of such game-form effect among non-sober participants is consistent with alcohol myopia. Tourists share more than local residents, significantly so for sober participants. The private property game elicits more efficiency than the common property game. This game-form effect is robust across sober and non-sober participants.