Deterring delays in public goods contributions: the role of communication and rewards

Cooperation is important but difficult to sustain in social dilemmas, such as those encountered in public goods provision. As evidenced by UN peacekeeping operations, it is even more difficult to motivate agents to lead in the contributing process when costs and risks are higher and when contribution decisions are not made simultaneously. We conduct a lab experiment to investigate how communication and rewards can promote leading behavior in public goods provision. We find that both reward and communication can significantly promote leading behavior when the contributing agents are homogeneous. However, when agents are heterogeneous in their payoff structures, only rewards can significantly promote leading behavior. Communication between heterogeneous agents increases the willingness to lead among high-payoff agents but decreases the willingness to lead among low-payoff agents. Our findings provide useful policymaking insights regarding into how to motivate agents to contribute public goods on time, and suggest that the answer to the question of whether communication or reward is the more effective mechanism in deterring delays in public goods contributions depends on the payoff distribution of team members.