Decision-making in multiple-public-goods problems: implications for cooperation and conflict within and between groups

Abstract

Although human groups often present individuals with multiple public goods to cooperate on, such as healthcare and education, research on cooperation and conflict has been largely limited to settings in which individuals face only a single public good problem. This leaves unrecognized that individuals, commanding limited resources, need to select which public goods to cooperate on and which ones to leave aside. Which contextual and individual factors influence how individuals make those decisions, and what consequences can occur for public good provision and intergroup relations, are questions I address in the three empirical chapters of this dissertation.