Matching contributions and the voluntary provision of a pure public good: Experimental evidence

Abstract

Laboratory experiments are used to study the voluntary provision of a pure public good in the presence of an anonymous external donor. The external funds are used in two different settings, lump-sum matching and one-to-one matching, to examine how allocations to the public good are affected. The experimental results reveal that allocations to the public good under lump-sum matching are significantly higher and have significantly lower within-group dispersion relative to one-to-one matching and two baseline settings without external matching funds. In addition, a comparison of the two baseline conditions reveals a positive framing effect on public goods allocations when it is explicitly revealed to subjects that an outside source has made an unconditional allocation to the public good.