Heterogeneous agents in public goods experiments

We explore by purely experimental means a heterogeneous agents scenario in experimental public good games, assuming the existence of at least three types of players: free riders, co-operators, and reciprocators. We identify the various types by mean of four classification methods and then play the public good goods game with homogeneous groups. We observe that (1) the average contribution level is enhanced in this setting; (2) the decay phenomenon is replicated in groups of “pure” free riders, whereas in groups of cooperative and reciprocating players the contribution is high and fairly stable throughout the game.