Private provision of a public good: cooperation and altruism of internet forum users

Alejandro Ros-Galvez and Alfonso Rosa-García

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We run an experiment with users of internet message boards. We find that forum users cooperate more with partners of their own forum than with partners from a different forum but they are equally altruistic when they made a gift to a partner of their forum or from another one. We also find that individuals are more active in the forums, the more altruistic they are; however, we find no relation between activity in the forum and cooperation. These results suggest that the public good provided in internet forums is mainly provided by a group of unconditional altruistic group of users, and that the feeling of community supports the cooperation in that provision.

Keywords: internet forums; public good provision; altruism; cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 C90 H41 H42 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-07-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-ict, nep-pub and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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