Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons: a replication and an extension to income inequality
Author(s)
Drouvelis, Michalis
Qiu, Zeyu
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Social cooperation often requires individuals to exhibit restraint for the greater good, incurring costs for maintaining public goods or establishing them through generosity. Will cooperative behaviors differ between maintenance and provision dilemmas? We replicate findings showing that low cooperation is more likely in maintenance than provision scenarios among a non-student sample with reciprocity being the main reason behind cooperative differences. A separate experiment reports similar effects in the case of income inequality, also suggesting dilemma-specific reciprocity is vital in averting the 'tragedy of the commons'. Our findings reinforce and broaden previous conclusions in the literature.
Date Issued
2026-01-01
Date Acceptance
2025-04-15
Citation
Economic Inquiry, 2026, 64 (1), pp.120-130
ISSN
0095-2583
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
120
End Page
130
Journal / Book Title
Economic Inquiry
Volume
64
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Economic Inquiry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Western Economic Association International. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
10.1111/ecin.13297
Subjects
cooperation
income inequality
online experiments
replication
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2025-05-02