Voting and Contributing While the Group is Watching

Emeric Henry (1, 2) , Charles Louis-Sidois (1, 3)

1 ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po)
2 CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research
3 Universität Mannheim [Mannheim]

Members of groups and organizations often have to decide on rules that regulate their contributions to common tasks. They typically differ in their propensity to contribute and often care about the image they project, in particular want to be perceived by other group members as being high contributors. In such environments we study the interaction between the way members vote on rules and their subsequent contribution decisions. We show that multiple norms can emerge. We draw surprising policy implications, on the effect of group size, of supermajority rules and of the observability of actions.

Keywords: Image concern; Voting; Public good

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Emeric Henry, Charles Louis-Sidois. Voting and Contributing While the Group is Watching. 2018. ⟨hal-03393121⟩