Self-sacrifice for the Common Good under Risk and Competition: An Experimental Examination of the Impact of Public Service Motivation in a Volunteer's Dilemma Game

Florian Heine, Arjen Van Witteloostuijn, Tse Min Wang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Public service-motivated individuals have a greater concern for the delivery of public services and for the societal consequence of collective inaction, seeing themselves play a pivotal role in upholding public goods. Such self-efficacy and perceived importance of public service jointly motivate individuals to commit to sacrificing for the common good. Using an incentivized laboratory experiment with 126 undergraduate and graduate students at a university in the Netherlands, we explore the association between self-reported public service motivation (PSM) and voluntary self-sacrifice under different task characteristics and social contexts in a Volunteer's Dilemma game. We find that risk-taking and intergroup competition negatively moderate the positive effect of PSM on volunteering. The risky situation may reduce an individual's self-efficacy in making meaningful sacrifice, and intergroup competition may divert attention away from the concern for society at large to the outcome of the competition, compromising the positive effect of PSM on the likelihood to self-sacrifice for the common good.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)217-232
Number of pages16
JournalJournal of Public Administration Research and Theory
Volume32
Issue number1
Early online date8 Jul 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s).

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Self-sacrifice for the Common Good under Risk and Competition: An Experimental Examination of the Impact of Public Service Motivation in a Volunteer's Dilemma Game'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this