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Measuring conditional cooperation: a replication study in Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Benedikt Herrmann*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, University of Nottingham, University Park, NG7 2RD Nottingham, UK
Christian Thöni*
Affiliation:
University of St. Gallen, FEW-HSG, Varnbüelstrasse 14, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland

Abstract

We replicate the strategy-method experiment by Fischbacher et al. (Econ. Lett. 71:397-404, 2001) developed to measure attitudes towards cooperation in a one-shot public goods game. We collected data from 160 students at four different universities across urban and rural Russia. Using the classification proposed by Fischbacher et al. (2001) we find that the distribution of types is very similar across the four locations. The share of conditional cooperators in our Russian subject pools is comparable to the one found by Fischbacher et al. in a Swiss subject pool. However, the distribution of the other types differs from the one found in Switzerland.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

We are grateful for the invaluable research assistance provided by Sergei Zorya, Lena Gerasimenko, Michael Belaev, Jevgenji Maslukov, Alexei Bibikov and Valerie Kowalenko. We also would like to thank the Universities of Agricultural Sciences Brijansk (Kokino), Samara (Ust-Kinel), the Belgorod State Technical Academy of Building Materials, and the All-Russian Distance Institute of Finance and Economics (ARDIFE) in Kursk for supporting us with the necessary infrastructure and Hans Kolb-Wellpappe Ltd. for the donation of cardboard screens used in the experiments. We are grateful for comments from Tim Cason, Therese Faessler, Simon Gächter, Nikhil Masters, and two anonymous referees.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-008-9197-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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