THE FREE-RIDER PROBLEM IN INTERGROUP CONFLICTS OVER STEP-LEVEL AND CONTINUOUS PUBLIC-GOODS

Free riding is a paramount consideration in intergroup conflicts because the benefits associated with such conflicts are public goods with respect to the members of a competing group. To study the free-rider problem and its effects on conflict resolution, (a) intergroup conflicts are modeled as team games; (b) a new team game that models intergroup conflicts over continuous public goods is introduced and is contrasted with a recently developed game that simulates intergroup conflicts over step-level public goods; and (c) 2 experiments that compared the effects of communication in the 2 team games are reported. Experiment 1 shows that within-group discussion is highly effective in solving the intragroup dilemma in the step-level game but much less effective in the continuous game. In contrast, Experiment 2 shows that between-group communication is highly effective in solving the intergroup conflict in the continuous game but considerably less effective in the step-level game.