The effects of voice with(out) punishment: Public goods provision and rule compliance

•We investigate the effect of comment-based participation on public goods provision.•Comments are tested with and without exogenous sanctioning.•Comments increase public goods provision in the short-run but not in the longer-run.•Comments with sanctioning generate the highest contributions to the public good.•Rule-makers who receive comments choose significantly higher contribution rules. We investigate the effect of voice exercised through comment-based participation on individual public goods provision. We implement a modified linear public goods game with treatments along two dimensions. First, we introduce a comment mechanism where individuals can provide unstructured feedback to influence a third-party rule-maker who determines a minimum contribution rule (MCR) at the beginning of the game. Second, we implement a probabilistic sanctioning mechanism for individuals who do not contribute at least the MCR. We find that without punishment, comments are insufficient to maintain high contribution levels over time. However, when enforcement is present, comment-based participation has a positive effect on players’ contributions to the public good and on their probability of compliance with the MCR. Comments also have a large positive effect on the MCR set by the rule-maker; players, in turn, respond to an increase in the MCR by making larger contributions to the public good.