General description

In this task, you will be randomly matched with 3 other participants to interact in a group of 4 throughout 10 rounds. All members of the group will remain anonymous, this means that your identity will be kept private. All members of the group receive the same information and instructions as you. Moreover, you and all members of your group will observe the exact same information and setup in their screens.

This task consists of the following steps:

You and the other 3 members of your group will be asked to choose how many tokens to extract from a shared resource.
The sum of all extractions of the group will result in a group payoff. This payoff is then distributed to participants proportional to how much they extracted from the shared resource. This means that your earnings will depend on your choice and the choices of the other 3 group members.
This process is repeated for 10 rounds.

Calculate your earnings

Your earnings for a given round depend on the total group extraction in that round according to Table 1. That is, it depends on both your extraction and the extractions of the other 3 group members.

In Table 1:

The first column refers to what you and all the other 3 participants extracted.
The second column shows how many ECUs were produced for that amount extracted by the group.
The third column shows how many ECUs are given per token you extracted.

Your earnings for a given round can be calculated by multiplying the number of tokens you have extracted by the third column of the table (the amount of ECUs per token extracted).

As an example, in a given round, if you extract 5 tokens and the rest of the group 15, the group extraction will be (5+15) = 20, which will produce 36 ECUs for the group, as shown in the first row of Table 1 (highlighted in yellow). The 5 tokens you extracted will yield then 9 ECUs (5 tokens * 1.8 ECUs per token extracted) for yourself.

As you can see, this value per token depends on the total group extraction, i.e. the more tokens you request, the more ECUs you can get, but more group extraction reduces the average return per token.

Your final earnings for this task will be the sum of your earnings over the 10 rounds that the task lasts.

Note: Notice at the end of the table that the payoff can be negative. It is not very likely, but in case your total payoff over the 10 rounds of this task is negative, your final payoff for this task will be zero.

Group extraction	ECUs produced	ECUs return per token extracted
20	36	1.8
21	37.275	1.775
22	38.5	1.75
23	39.675	1.725
24	40.8	1.7
25	41.875	1.675
26	42.9	1.65
27	43.875	1.625
28	44.8	1.6
29	45.675	1.575
30	46.5	1.55
31	47.275	1.525
32	48	1.5
33	48.675	1.475
34	49.3	1.45
35	49.875	1.425
36	50.4	1.4
37	50.875	1.375
38	51.3	1.35
39	51.675	1.325
40	52	1.3
41	52.275	1.275
42	52.5	1.25
43	52.675	1.225
44	52.8	1.2
45	52.875	1.175
46	52.9	1.15
47	52.875	1.125
48	52.8	1.1
49	52.675	1.075
50	52.5	1.05
51	52.275	1.025
52	52	1
53	51.675	0.975
54	51.3	0.95
55	50.875	0.925
56	50.4	0.9
57	49.875	0.875
58	49.3	0.85
59	48.675	0.825
60	48	0.8
61	47.275	0.775
62	46.5	0.75
63	45.675	0.725
64	44.8	0.7
65	43.875	0.675
66	42.9	0.65
67	41.875	0.625
68	40.8	0.6
69	39.675	0.575
70	38.5	0.55
71	37.275	0.525
72	36	0.5
73	34.675	0.475
74	33.3	0.45
75	31.875	0.425
76	30.4	0.4
77	28.875	0.375
78	27.3	0.35
79	25.675	0.325
80	24	0.3
81	22.275	0.275
82	20.5	0.25
83	18.675	0.225
84	16.8	0.2
85	14.875	0.175
86	12.9	0.15
87	10.875	0.125
88	8.8	0.1
89	6.675	0.075
90	4.5	0.05
91	2.275	0.025
92	0	0
93	-2.325	-0.025
94	-4.7	-0.05
95	-7.125	-0.075
96	-9.6	-0.1
97	-12.125	-0.125
98	-14.7	-0.15
99	-17.325	-0.175
100	-20	-0.2
101	-22.725	-0.225
102	-25.5	-0.25
103	-28.325	-0.275
104	-31.2	-0.3
105	-34.125	-0.325
106	-37.1	-0.35
107	-40.125	-0.375
108	-43.2	-0.4
109	-46.325	-0.425
110	-49.5	-0.45
111	-52.725	-0.475
112	-56	-0.5
113	-59.325	-0.525
114	-62.7	-0.55
115	-66.125	-0.575
116	-69.6	-0.6
117	-73.125	-0.625
118	-76.7	-0.65
119	-80.325	-0.675
120	-84	-0.7

Table 1

Important notes

Before you are assigned to a group, you will need to complete a short comprehension test to check that you understood the instructions. You have 5 attempts to answer the test correctly. In the event that you fail the test 5 times, the experiment will be terminated, and you will be redirected to Prolific.
You will wait in the lobby to be matched with other 3 participants for a maximum of 15 minutes. In the event that we cannot find a group for you, the experiment will be terminated, and you will be redirected to Prolific.
While waiting to be matched into a group, please, do not change tabs or close your browser. If you do so, you will not be matched into a group. If we detect that you lost focus on this tab for more than 2 minutes, you will be removed from the experiment and redirected to Prolific.
Once you are assigned to a group, you and every other member of your group will have a maximum of 2 minutes to make each decision. If you are timed out, you will be removed from the experiment, and redirected to Prolific.
If a participant in your group drops out from the experiment, you will play with the remaining participants, this means, your group will consist of you and the remaining participants. You will be notified if this happens. If only two participants remain on the experiment, this task will be cancelled, and you will be paid for the previous two tasks that you have completed as well as the fixed fee.

In the next page, you will be able to play with the values of Table 2 in a Sandbox and test your understanding of the task.

In Sandbox 1, see how your and other group members' payoffs change with token extraction. Take your time in this step to familiarize yourself with the payoff structure. Before making your final decision on how many tokens to extract from the shared resource. Play with the sliders to update your extraction (first slider) and the individual extractions of your group (second slider). Notice how the group extraction and each payoff changes accordingly.

In the next screen, we ask you to complete a short comprehension test. After this test, you will be able to start task 3. Click Next when you are ready, once you click Next you cannot go back.

Participant	Extraction	Payoff
You
Other 3 participants
Group total