A. GARY ANDERSON GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT CENTER FOR SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE ORGANIZATIONS RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES Professor Rachel T. A. Croson Associate Professor of Operation and Information Management Wharton School of Management, University of Pennsylvania Theories of Commitment, Altruism and Reciprocity: Evidence from Linear Public Goods Games Abstract Theories of commitment, altruism and reciprocity have all been invoked to explain and describe observed behavior in public goods and social dilemma situations. In particular, commitment theories have been used to explain behaviors like water conservation and voting. Theories of altruism and applied in explanation of contributions to charities intergenerational transfers and bequests. And theories of reciprocity have been invoked to explain gift exchange and labor market decisions. This paper describes a set of experiments which distinguish between these competing theories by testing their comparative statics predictions in a linear public goods setting. Results provide strong support for reciprocity theories over either theories of commitment or of altruism. Friday, March 2, 2001, 11 am-12:30 pm Room 021, Anderson Hall, UC Riverside Copies of the paper to be presented are available at http://www.goldmark.org/livia/misc/croson.rtf or from Prof. Lívia Markóczy, Livia.Markoczy@ucr.edu, Anderson Hall, Rm 221, 787-3908