Conditional Cooperation: Type Stability Across Games

To classify cooperation types, a sequential prisoner's dilemma and a one-shot public goods game with strategy method are convenient experimental setups. We explore the within subject stability of cooperation preferences in these two games. Our results suggest that subjects classified as conditional cooperators in the sequential prisoner's dilemma match others' contributions in the one-shot public goods game to a significantly larger degree compared to other types - indicating a substantial consistency between these two games. Regarding discrete behavioral types, our results support the claim that the sequential prisoner's dilemma performs well in identifying conditional cooperators while it is only an imperfect tool for identifying selfish types.