EXCLUSION AS AN INCENTIVE TOOL FOR THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS?

Exclusion appears to be a good incentive in order to increase contributions to the public good as it excludes from the benefits the free-riders (Swope [2002]). We investigate experimentally whether exclusion leads to increased performance in linear public goods, when membership is very low. Our result shows that in our case the existence of exclusion does not succeed in increasing cooperation. This unexpected result is paradoxically supported by Bchir and Willinger [2012] who found that at a high threshold level, the membership fee no longer ensures successful provision.