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Cooperation and social classes: evidence from Colombia

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Abstract

We investigate the relationship between social class belonging and contributions to local public goods. By utilizing the social class classifications in Colombia and an experimental design based on the strategy method, we can both study contributions to public goods and classify subjects into contribution types. We find similar contribution levels between high and medium-low social classes and also similar distributions of contributor types. However, low social class members conditionally contribute a significantly higher level than high social class members. This has implications for policymakers, who may need to consider differential policy schemes for locally provided public goods.

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Notes

  1. It should be noted that in a multi-period public goods experiment, a selfish individual might contribute for strategic reasons just to encourage other group members to contribute.

  2. By culture we mean classification of people which is not directly related to genetic inheritance; it can be both material as well as non-material such as beliefs and norms.

  3. To explicitly test for the group effect, Gächter and Thöni (2005) created artificial groups within a culture in a public goods experiment. They conducted a two-stage public goods experiment where they first conducted a one-shot public goods experiment to identify types of contributors and then grouped subjects of similar contribution types together (and informed them about it) in a multi-period public goods experiment. They found that cooperative groups managed to maintain high levels of cooperation throughout the experiment and vice versa. Similar findings are reported in, e.g., Gunnthorsdottir et al. (2007), Ones and Putterman (2007), and Page et al. (2005).

  4. The labeling “low-low” is a direct translation of the Spanish labeling “bajo-bajo.” Although this term would probably be better labeled as “very low” in English, we decided to keep the original Spanish labeling.

  5. For previous studies on common pool resources and public goods in Colombia, see, e.g., Cárdenas et al. (2000) and Cárdenas (2003).

  6. There is substantial evidence that people cooperate also with genetically unrelated people in one-shot events, i.e., “strong reciprocity” (e.g., Gintis 2000; Fehr et al. 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher 2003).

  7. See National Department of Statistics of Colombia (2011a, b).

  8. The exchange rate at the time of the experiment was approximately US$ 1 = COP 2000.

  9. In cases where samples have different opportunity costs, either the absolute amount in the experiment or the opportunity cost can be kept constant. We decided to keep the opportunity cost constant; it should be noted that Kocher et al. (2008) did not find a significant stake effect using a one-shot public goods experiment. In our experiment, a lunch at the MEDIUM-LOW social-class university costs approximately 75 % of a lunch at the HIGH social-class university, and similar differences exist for other goods in the respective neighborhoods.

  10. Both figures include a show-up fee of COP 5000.

  11. When comparing material resources and subjective socio-economic status not using broad categories of social class (university) but instead by socio-economic strata, the results hold. This indicates that socio-economic stratification is a good proxy for social class.

  12. In fact, the conditional contribution of participants from stratum 1 is higher than the average contribution from the other group members, i.e., it is above the perfect conditional contribution schedule.

  13. At the MEDIUM-LOW social class university, 27 % of the participants perfectly match their unconditional contribution given their beliefs and their responses in in the conditional contribution table; the corresponding figure is 20 % for the HIGH social class university. Based on a test of proportions we cannot reject the hypothesis that they are the same (p value = 0.39).

  14. The results hold when using socio-economic strata as an independent variable instead of a dummy variable for HIGH social class.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), Formas through the program Human Cooperation to Manage Natural Resources (COMMONS), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to the Environmental Economics Unit at the University of Gothenburg. We are also grateful to the School of Engineering (Escuela de Ingeniería de Antioquia), Medellín, Colombia, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, for their support of our experiment. Special thanks go to Antonio Villegas-Rivera and Felipe Mejía for excellent research assistance, and to Martin Kocher, Marta Matute, Katarina Nordblom, Patrik Söderholm, Alba Upegui, managing editor Clemens Puppe, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, P.O. Box 640, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Peter Martinsson & Conny Wollbrant

  2. Facultad de Minas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín, Medellín, Colombia

    Clara Villegas-Palacio

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  1. Peter Martinsson
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Correspondence to Conny Wollbrant.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 6.

Table 6 Distribution of contribution types in selected previous studies
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Martinsson, P., Villegas-Palacio, C. & Wollbrant, C. Cooperation and social classes: evidence from Colombia. Soc Choice Welf 45, 829–848 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-015-0886-3

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