Recent developments in virtual reality (VR) technology have the potential to revolutionize the way economists do experimental research. With Oculus’ light and affordable head mounted display (HMD) human subjects can literally move and use objects in virtual spaces and interact with others....

Experimental economics uses controlled and incentivized lab and field experiments to learn about economic behavior. By means of three examples, we illustrate how experiments conducted in immersive virtual environments can benefit (experimental) economic research.

Experimental economics uses controlled and incentivized lab and field experiments to learn about economic behavior. By means of three examples, we illustrate how experiments conducted in immersive virtual environments emerge as a new methodological tool that can benefit behavioral economic research.

We study, how help can be fostered under relative rewards by means of team bonus and corporate value statements. A simple model analysis suggests that team members help less as relative rewards increase. As one potential measure to encourage help, we augment relative rewards with team rewards...

In organizations, some team members are assigned to a team for a predefined short period of time, e.g., as they have a temporary contract, while others are permanent members of the same team. In a laboratory experiment we analyze the cooperation levels resulting from diverse teams, where some...

We propose experiments in virtual reality (VR) as a new approach to examining behavior in an economic context, e.g., heterogeneity in dynamic tournaments. We simulate a realistic working situation in a highly immersive environment. Implementing a tournament in VR, we are able to mitigate the...

We study how help can be fostered by means of a team bonus in the presence of rank-order tournaments. In a simple model we combine elements of relative rewards and a team bonus and study their effect on effort, help and sabotage. Quite intuitively the theoretical analysis suggests that team...

We experimentally analyze whether the opportunity to receive a permanent contract motivates temporary group members in a public good setting and how this affects the other group members. We compare an exogenous and an endogenous decision mechanism to extend the temporary agent's group...

We experimentally compare the consequences for group cooperation of two decision mechanisms involving the extension of group membership. We analyze an exogenous decision (random draw) and an endogenous decision (made by a particular group member) mechanism to extend a temporary agent's group...