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Leading by example versus leading by words in voluntary contribution experiments

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Abstract

This paper compares different forms of leadership in their ability to improve cooperation in a public goods experiment. Leaders either contribute before the others (leading by example) or make a non-binding pledge before all players contribute simultaneously (leading by words). The exogenously imposed leadership is then compared to an endogenous setting where players can choose if and how they want to lead. The results show that in both settings leading by example has significant positive effects on cooperation while leading by words only has small effects as compared to situations without leadership. However, only few subjects choose to lead by example when they have the choice. The majority choose to lead by words or do not want to lead at all. The results also show that leading by example is associated with an institutional effect (players increase their contributions when they have to lead by example) and a selection effect (players who choose to lead by example are particularly cooperative).

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Notes

  1. Table A1 in the Appendix gives an overview of experimental studies on unilateral leadership and communication.

  2. The experimental instructions are provided in the Appendix.

  3. Unless stated otherwise, all tests are two-sided.

  4. Table A2 in the Appendix provides p-values for differences in payoffs between the treatments.

  5. The subjects were not informed about the probability of the first-mover’s decision being overridden. This isn’t ideal but it was a compromise for the trade-off between asking first-movers hypothetically about their preferred form of leadership and collecting enough observations. The same approach was used in Dal Bó et al. (2010).

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Acknowledgments

I thank the MaXLab team at Magdeburg University for use of their laboratory. Financial support from Formas through the program Human Cooperation to Manage Natural Resources (COMMONS) is gratefully acknowledged. I’m also grateful to the SCW editors and three anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions.

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Correspondence to Astrid Dannenberg.

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Dannenberg, A. Leading by example versus leading by words in voluntary contribution experiments. Soc Choice Welf 44, 71–85 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-014-0817-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-014-0817-8

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