RESEARCH ARTICLE Sociality as a Natural Mechanism of Public Goods Provision

In the recent literature, several hypotheses have been offered to explain patterns of human behavior in social environments. In particular, these patterns include ‘prosocial ’ ones, such as fairness, cooperation, and collective good provision. Psychologists suggest that these prosocial behaviors are driven not by miscalculations, but by salience of social identity, in-group favoritism, emotion, or evolutionary adaptations. This paper imports psychology scholarship into an economic model and results in a sustainable solution to collective action problems without any external enforcement mechanisms. This natural mechanism of public goods provision is created, analyzed, and observed in a controlled laboratory environment using experimental techniques