We investigate the role of endowment inequality in a local and global public goods setting with multiple group membership and examine the effect of temporal role reversal on cooperation decisions. Subjects can contribute to a global public good which benefits all subjects and two local public goods which benefit only subjects of either their own group or the group of the other endowment type. Endowment inequality per-se decreases contributions of subjects with a high endowment to the global public good, but increases cooperation of subjects with a low endowment on their local public good, thereby aggravating income disparities. Exogenously induced role reversal for several periods affects cooperation behavior of subjects with a high endowment positively and induces them to contribute more to the global good. Cooperation in unequal environments thus appears to be more stable when all parties have experienced the public goods game from the disadvantageous perspective.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10683-021-09705-y.
Keywords: Cooperation; Inequality; Lab experiment; Multiple public goods; Perspective change; Role reversal; Voluntary contributions.
© The Author(s) 2021.