Incentivizing Cooperation Against a Norm of Defection : Experimental Evidence from Egypt

Voluntary cooperation contributes significantly to development and prosperity. Settings where the social norm is free-riding, however, offer a particular challenge for public goods contribution. In this paper we ask two questions: how could high contributors to public goods in such contexts be encouraged to sustain their contributions against a defecting crowd? Second, how can low contributors – who are abundant in such milieus – be lured to increase their contributions without expensive institutional interventions or major structural transformations? To answer these questions, we conducted two public good experiments with 276 participants in Egypt. In the first experiment, we find that priming high cooperators with a message that makes them take pride in being among the minority of cooperators increases contributions, albeit with a lag. In the second experiment, we test how far three possible appeal messages – emphasizing religious, patriotic, or social harm– could drive low cooperators to increase their contributions. We show that using such messages does increase contributions significantly. Some of our findings indicate, however, that primes could interact with dominant cultural traits – i.e. psychology of honor – making some interventions backfire over time, for particular participants