Distributive Justice and Cooperation in a Public Good Dilemma

Conflict between individual and collective welfares captures the main characteristic of social interaction and group work. In real life, group members usually possess unequal endowments. The present experiment examined the effects of distributive justice and endowment size on contributions in a public good dilemma. Results showed that participants in the equality condition contributed less to group account than those in the need condition. However, the expected interaction between distributive justice and endowment size on contribution to group account was not significant, but the interaction on self-reported psychological importance of personal payoff was indeed significant. The results indicate that violation of equality-based system may lead individuals to act more selfishly.