On the role of endowment heterogeneity and ambiguity for conditional cooperation

Conditional cooperation (CC) is one of the most persistent behaviors in charitable giving. The laboratory experiment presented in this paper is designed to explore two questions: First, whether heterogeneous endowments of donors affect conditional cooperative giving. Second, whether potential donors exploit ambiguity about other donors’ endowments in a self-serving manner to justify lower giving. We find that heterogeneous endowments affect giving in a way that suggests individuals concern for equality of donors’ earnings after giving. Furthermore, the results do not confirm the exploitation of ambiguity about other donors’ endowments. Individuals do not bias beliefs about other donors’ endowments in a self-serving manner to justify lower giving.