Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/279388 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 10637
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We examine the role of cooperative preferences, beliefs, and punishments to uncover potential cross-societal differences in voluntary cooperation. Using one-shot public goods experiments in four comparable subject pools from the US and the UK (two similar Western societies) and Morocco and Turkey (two comparable non-Western societies), we find that cooperation is lower in Morocco and Turkey than in the UK and the US. Using the ABC approach – in which cooperative attitudes and beliefs explain cooperation – we show that cooperation is mostly driven by differences in beliefs rather than cooperative preferences or peer punishment, both of which are similar across the four subject pools. Our methodology is generalizable across subject pools and highlights the central role of beliefs in explaining differences in voluntary cooperation within and across culturally, economically, and institutionally diverse societies. Because our behavioral mechanisms correctly predict actual contributions, we argue that our approach provides a suitable methodology for analyzing the determinants of voluntary cooperation of any group of interest.
Subjects: 
public goods
voluntary cooperation
ABC method
conditional cooperation
beliefs
punishment
cross-cultural experiments
WEIRD societies
JEL: 
C90
H40
C70
D20
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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