The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games

It is well documented that people are reluctant to switch from a default option. We experimentally test the robustness of this behavioral inertia in a collective decision-making setting by varying the default option type and the decision-making environment. We examine the impacts of automatic-partic...

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Main Authors: Liu, Jia, Riyanto, Yohanes Eko
Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/86851
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44240
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-868512020-03-07T12:10:38Z The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games Liu, Jia Riyanto, Yohanes Eko School of Humanities and Social Sciences Voluntary Contribution Behavioral Inertia It is well documented that people are reluctant to switch from a default option. We experimentally test the robustness of this behavioral inertia in a collective decision-making setting by varying the default option type and the decision-making environment. We examine the impacts of automatic-participation and no-participation default options on subjects’ participation in a public goods provision and their contributions. Two variants of public goods game are employed: the linear and the threshold public goods games. The study shows the evidence of partial stickiness rather than complete stickiness of default options as indicated in empirical studies. Our experimental results square with the evidence of behavioral inertia only when the automatic-participation default is used. This default boosts contributions in the linear public goods game but not in the threshold public goods game. The evidence of partial stickiness is robust to the variation of the game employed, but the effect on contribution is sensitive to it. Published version 2017-12-29T04:24:41Z 2019-12-06T16:30:11Z 2017-12-29T04:24:41Z 2019-12-06T16:30:11Z 2017 Journal Article Liu, J., & Riyanto, Y. E. (2017). The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games. Social Choice and Welfare, 48(4), 815-835. 0176-1714 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/86851 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44240 10.1007/s00355-017-1036-x en Social Choice and Welfare © 2017 The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. 21 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Voluntary Contribution
Behavioral Inertia
spellingShingle Voluntary Contribution
Behavioral Inertia
Liu, Jia
Riyanto, Yohanes Eko
The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
description It is well documented that people are reluctant to switch from a default option. We experimentally test the robustness of this behavioral inertia in a collective decision-making setting by varying the default option type and the decision-making environment. We examine the impacts of automatic-participation and no-participation default options on subjects’ participation in a public goods provision and their contributions. Two variants of public goods game are employed: the linear and the threshold public goods games. The study shows the evidence of partial stickiness rather than complete stickiness of default options as indicated in empirical studies. Our experimental results square with the evidence of behavioral inertia only when the automatic-participation default is used. This default boosts contributions in the linear public goods game but not in the threshold public goods game. The evidence of partial stickiness is robust to the variation of the game employed, but the effect on contribution is sensitive to it.
author2 School of Humanities and Social Sciences
author_facet School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Liu, Jia
Riyanto, Yohanes Eko
format Article
author Liu, Jia
Riyanto, Yohanes Eko
author_sort Liu, Jia
title The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
title_short The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
title_full The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
title_fullStr The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
title_full_unstemmed The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
title_sort limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games
publishDate 2017
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/86851
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44240
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