The influence of endowments asymmetry and information level on the contribution to a public step good

Abstract

An experimental study examined the effects of asymmetry of endowments and information level on the contribution to a public step good. In 4-person groups endowments were distributed asymmetrically, with two members being assigned relatively few endowments, and two members relatively many endowments. Subjects in the Information condition were informed about this asymmetry while subjects in the No Information condition only learned how many endowments they possessed themselves. For exploratory reasons an Information 4- Proposal condition was added in which members, being informed about the asymmetry, proposed a certain contribution for each group member to each other. In line with equity theory, subjects informed about the asymmetry considered it to be fair for High Endowment members to contribute more than Low Endowment members. More specifically, subjects informed about the asymmetry seemed to prefer a proportional distribution of the contributions while uninformed subjects preferred an equal distribution of the contributions. Actual contributions, however, were not influenced by the independent variables.