Behaviour in a Two-Stage Public Goods Experiment

Abstract: I investigate whether the adoption of a two-stage public goods framework causes a change in contributions to public goods compared to a standard public goods game. For this purpose, my first treatment (S) is a standard public goods game and represents the baseline treatment. The second treatment (D) is a twostage public goods game. In each stage, agents allocate their endowments between a private good and a public good. The results show that subjects contribute more to the public good in the S treatment than in the D treatment. In addition, agents under the D treatment evenly divide their limited endowments between both public goods, regardless of differences in the marginal per capita returns of the two goods.