Replication data for: Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations

This document contains supplementary materials for the paper Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations. It is organized in the following way: Section 1 consists of a sample of the instructions used in the experiment and in the online questionnaire study, Section 2 contains the results of nonparametric comparisons between treatments, Section 3 provides a detailed description of the frequency of periods with maximal contributions, Section 4 presents the regressions of the various robustness checks for the norm-elicitation technique reported in the paper, and Section 5 provides regressions that illustrate the reaction in contributions to being punished.

We investigate the emergence and enforcement of contribution norms to public goods in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. With survey data we demonstrate that uninvolved individuals hold well defined yet conflicting normative views of fair contribution rules related to efficiency, equality, and equity. In the experiment, in the absence of punishment no positive contribution norm is observed and all groups converge towards free-riding. With punishment, strong and stable differences in contributions emerge across group types and individuals in different roles. In some cases these differences result from the emergence of an efficiency norm where all fully contribute. In the cases where full efficiency is not attained, these differences result from the enforcement of different relative contribution norms. Hence, our experimental data show that, even in heterogeneous groups, individuals can overcome the collective action problem inherent in public good games by agreeing on and enforcing a contribution norm.