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Private provision of a public good: cooperation and altruism of internet forum users Cover

Private provision of a public good: cooperation and altruism of internet forum users

Open Access
|Sep 2015

Abstract

We ran an experiment with users of Internet forums. In a dictator game, we find that the level of altruism is positively related to the activity in the forum. In a public good game, there is no relation between cooperation in the game and contribution to the content of the forum. Subjects are not more altruistic with partners from the same forum but do cooperate more with them. These results suggest that the public good provided in Internet forums is mainly provided by a group of unconditional altruistic users, and that the sense of belonging supports the cooperation in that provision.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.554 | Journal eISSN: 1875-0281
Language: English
Published on: Sep 18, 2015
Published by: Uopen Journals
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2015 Alejandro Ros-Galvez, Alfonso Rosa-Garcia, published by Uopen Journals
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.