Data: Self-Sacrifice for the Common Good under Risk and Competition

Public service-motivated individuals have a greater concern for the delivery of public services and for the societal consequence of collective inaction, and they see themselves playing a pivotal role in upholding public goods. Such self-efficacy and perceived importance of public service jointly motivate individuals to commit themselves to sacrificing for the common good.

Using an incentivized laboratory experiment with a Volunteer’s Dilemma game, which is a well-established stylized variant of a common good setting, we explore the association between self-reported Public Service Motivation (PSM) and voluntary self-sacrifice under different task characteristics and social contexts. We find that risk-taking and intergroup competition negatively moderate the positive effect of PSM on volunteering.