Individual-adjustment behavior versus group-welfare behavior.

The abundance of experimental literature on real subjects' behavior in social dilemma situations with free-rider options displays a discouraging instability of results. Particularly disquieting is the divergence of results depending on whether the social dilemma is modelled as a cooperation game with a Pareto-deficient solution or as a market transaction over some public good. We argue that this divergence of experimental data unveils a serious shortcoming of the theoretical framework of the study of free-riding up to the time being. Rather than taking free-riding as a straight indicator of an unwillingness to cooperate at all, it is proposed to operationalize non-cooperativeness as 'Individual-Adjustment behavior' and cooperativeness as 'Group- Welfare behavior'. Precise definitions in terms of welfare microeconomics are given for these two pure types of rational behavior in social dilemma situations. The point is that free-riding can occur in both types, even though under quite different conditions. Neglect of this fact may account for the confusion in the experimental data. The results of an experiment which confirm the usefulness of the proposed new conceptual framework are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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