Journal of Economic Behavior Organization Vol. 43 2000 405–421
Warm-glow versus cold-prickle: a further experimental study of framing effects on free-riding
Eun-Soo Park
Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, MO 65409-1250, USA Received 24 June 1998; accepted 21 March 2000
Abstract
This paper examines the effects of positive and negative framing on cooperation in voluntary public goods provision experiments in which subjects have different value orientations. The major
finding of this experiment is that while there is a significant difference between the two framing conditions in terms of overall contribution rates, there is no significant difference for some subjects.
In particular, the data strongly suggest that the negative framing has a most salient effect on the subjects who have individualistic value orientation, whereas the negative framing has a rather
insignificant effect on the subjects who have cooperative value orientation. This suggests that at least for some group, the behavioral asymmetry between the warm-glow of doing something good
and cold-prickle of doing something bad may not be as significant as in the previous study of Andreoni 1995. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Public goods experiment; Free riding; Framing effects; Value orientations
JEL classification: C92; H41
1. Introduction
Despite the fact that free riding is a dominant-strategy in a standard one-shot voluntary public goods provision problem, virtually all public goods provision experiments in the
laboratory find the lack of free riding.
1
Even though some environmental parameters for experiments such as repetition, experience, and low marginal returns from the public goods
are found to be potentially important determinants of free riding, the convergence to the equilibrium prediction seems to be too slow to support the theory fully.
2 E-mail address:
esparkumr.edu E.-S. Park.
1
See Davis and Holt 1992 and Ledyard 1995 for survey on public goods experiments.
2
See Issac and Walker 1988 and Issac et al. 1985. 0167-268100 – see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 2 6 8 1 0 0 0 0 1 2 8 - 1
406 E.-S. Park J. of Economic Behavior Org. 43 2000 405–421
In his recent paper, Andreoni 1995 has suggested that much of the cooperation observed in public good provision experiments may be due to framing. In order to examine the effects
of positive and negative framing on the level of cooperation in public goods experiments, Andreoni considered two different framing conditions: 1 the positive-frame condition, in
which subject’s choice is framed as contributing to a public good that makes other subjects better off and; 2 the negative-frame condition, in which subject’s choice is framed as buying
a private good that makes other subjects worse off. By conducting public goods experiments under these two conditions, Andreoni finds that contribution rates are considerably lower
under the negative-frame condition than under the positive-frame condition. His arguments that much of the cooperation observed in public good provision experiments may be due to
framing seem to be very convincing as the contribution rate to the public good converges to the Nash equilibrium by the end of iterations under the negative frame.
3
The main objective of this paper is to examine the robustness of Andreoni’s findings regarding the existence of a positive–negative asymmetry. Given that previous voluntary
public good provision experiments by many authors reported a high variance in contribution rates among subjects, it may be that some people are more sensitive to framing than others.
In particular, this paper concerns whether such a behavioral asymmetry exists uniformly across the subjects who have different value orientations Liebrand, 1984; Offerman et al.,
1996, i.e. different preferences regarding one’s own welfare relative to the welfare of oth- ers. In order to study the framing effects on the subjects with different value orientations,
data on individual value orientation were first obtained using the Decomposed Game exper- imental design Liebrand, 1984; Offerman et al., 1996. Then Andreoni’s experiment was
replicated.
The major finding of this experiment is that while there is a significant difference between the two framing conditions in terms of overall contribution rates, there is no significant
difference for some subjects. In particular, the data strongly suggest that the negative framing has a most salient effect on the subjects who have individualistic value orientation, whereas
the negative framing has a rather insignificant effect on the subjects who have cooperative value orientation.
In Section 2, differences between experiments with positive and negative externalities are first discussed. A brief account on value orientations developed by social psychologists
is then followed. In Sections 3 and 4, the experimental design and results are presented, respectively. Section 5 contains concluding discussion of the experimental results.
2. Framing effects and value orientations
