This paper studies how risk impacts the voluntary provision of public goods. In a laboratory experiment, we create variants of a public good game by separating the return a subject’s contribution generates for herself vs. the return her contribution generates to others. We find a detrimental effect of risk on public good provision when returns in both dimensions are positively correlated or independent. A negative correlation leads to more stable investments. Disentangling the impact of risk in each dimension, we find that investments particularly respond to risk in the return to others. Investigating the impact of these different types of risks can inform theories on the nature of social preferences.

本文研究风险如何影响公共物品的自愿提供。在实验室实验中，我们通过将受试者的贡献为自己产生的回报与她的贡献为他人带来的回报分开来创建公益游戏的变体。当两个维度的回报正相关或独立时，我们发现风险对公共物品供给的不利影响。负相关导致更稳定的投资。分解风险在每个维度的影响，我们发现投资特别是在回报他人时对风险做出反应。调查这些不同类型风险的影响可以为有关社会偏好性质的理论提供信息。