Research Collaborations

ASSESSMENT GAMES

In collaboration with Game2Value, an Italian HRTech company operating in the field of assessment gaming, in March 2022, we conducted an experiment on contributing to a public good (voluntary contribution game, Andreoni 1988).

Experimental participants were about 200 Sapienza undergraduate students in Economics and Finance attending the laboratory of experimental economics organized by Giuseppe Attanasi (Sapienza), Luca Panaccione (Sapienza) and Stefano Papa (Tor Vergata), held in Aula Tarantelli (Faculty of Economics, Sapienza University).

The experiment aimed to analyze the impact of one of Game2Value's most recent video games, "Mission to Includivium", on the collaboration of people within a team.

Mission to Includivium is a videogame experience where players go on a mission to another planet, where they face their unconscious biases, their level of inclusivity, and, more generally, all issues related to the themes of Diversity and Inclusion.

It is well known in the experimental literature that in a 10-period "repeated matching" voluntary contribution game within the same group (Andreoni & Croson 2008), players cooperate in contributing to the public good in the first 6-7 periods, and then, unfortunately, stop contributing in the last 3 periods (end-game effect).

By exposing subjects to "Mission to Includivium" as a "nudge" (Thaler & Sunstein 2009) before participating in the public good contribution game, we observed that the average group contribution to the public good remained constant and thus did not decrease in the last periods.

This is the first experimental study in economics showing that video gaming leads economic agents to be more inclusive and collaborative at the aggregate level (social norms: Attanasi et al. 2014, 2016).

We will rely on this pilot study and extend/implement it with a more representative audience during the next 12 months to provide a more thorough analysis of the interplay between video gaming and social behaviour in economic environments. This would lead to a two-year dissertation project (Master's degree in Political Economy, Sapienza University) and a scientific publication highlighting whether cooperation boosters in the public-good game are the same people who result more inclusive in the preceding video game. A first working paper version of this study will be ready in late 2022.


References

  • Andreoni, J. (1988). Why free ride?: Strategies and learning in public goods experiments. Journal of Public Economics, 37(3), 291-304.

  • Andreoni, J., & Croson, R. (2008). Partners versus strangers: Random rematching in public goods experiments. Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, 1, 776-783.

  • Attanasi, G., Hopfensitz, A., Lorini, E., & Moisan, F. (2014). The effects of social ties on coordination: conceptual foundations for an empirical analysis. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 13(1), 47-73.

  • Attanasi, G., Hopfensitz, A., Lorini, E., & Moisan, F. (2016). Social connectedness improves co-ordination on individually costly, efficient outcomes. European Economic Review, 90, 86-106.

  • Thaler, R. H., Sunstein, C. R. (2009), Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness, Yale University Press, New Haven & London