Endowment heterogeneity and identifiability in the information-exchange dilemma

In a laboratory experiment providing an information-exchange dilemma we obtained evidence that people in an asymmetric dilemma situation apply a general cooperation norm as well as a norm of proportionality. The results showed that for privileged people the significance of the norm of proportionality is reduced. This egocentric bias allows them to justify that their privilege does not obligate them to contribute more than others. However, this bias is not strong enough to totally invalidate the norm of proportionality. Even with this bias privileged people contributed more than unprivileged. In addition, we found people to be more cooperative if their behavior in the information exchange is identifiable, whereas identifiability does not influence people's general cooperation norm nor their fairness concept. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.