Volunteer's Dilemma Game

Charles Holt

Public Goods
Game Theory

Experiment Software

This program sets up a multi-person game in which each person chooses whether or not to "volunteer." The payoff for all people in a group is higher if at least one of them volunteers, but a volunteer incurs a cost that cannot be shared. The incentives are such that each person would prefer to volunteer only if it is likely that nobody else will do so. You may specify the cost of volunteering and the individual payoffs when there is at least one volunteer and when there is no volunteer. You also specify the group size and the number of rounds. Groupings may be fixed (same in all periods) or randomly reconfigured after each round. There may be two treatments with differing parameters; but a one-treatment setup is obtained by setting the number of rounds in treatment 2 to be zero.