Public goods provision in an experimental environment

The traditional economic models, based on assumptions about nonexcludability and single-period behavior, led directly to a prediction that social decision processes that rely on voluntary individual payment for the provision of public goods cannot work. Nine experiments were conducted to examine the behavior of groups within a set of conditions where it was expected the traditional model would work with reasonable accuracy. Subjects were obtained primarily from undergraduate economics classes at Pasadena City College and the California Institute of Technology, except for one experiment that used subjects recruited from an undergraduate sociology class at Pasadena City College. The experiments and procedures identified provide a setting within which public goods are provided at near zero levels and thus constitute a context for the testing of institutions and theories that are proposed as solutions to the public goods problem. Analysis unambiguously demonstrates the existence of the underprovision of public goods and the related free-riding phenomenon, thereby discrediting the claims of those who assert that the phenomenon does not or cannot exist.