Laboratory Data on Gradualism and Coordination in Threshold Contribution Games

Plamen Nikolov of Harvard University Press uses a laboratory binary choice minimum-effort coordination game to study gradualism. The experiment randomly assigned participants to three treatments to test how slowly increasing contribution thresholds affects coordination success. Findings suggest a simple, voluntary mechanism can promote coordination when sanction capacity is limited.

Use Cases

• Testing theories of belief updating in coordination games based on the experimental treatments described.
• Modeling reinforcement learning or conditional cooperation behaviors using the binary choice game data.
• Comparing the effectiveness of gradual versus immediate threshold policies for public project contributions.
• Investigating alternative explanations like inertia or preference for consistency in sequential decision-making.

Strengths

• Data originates from a controlled laboratory experiment with random assignment to three distinct treatments.
• The study design directly tests a specific policy mechanism (gradualism) against clear alternatives.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Harvard University Press

Collection Method

Laboratory experiment using a binary choice minimum-effort coordination game.

Time Range

null

Freshness

unknown

Geography

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