Diekmann, Andreas. 1985. “Volunteer’s Dilemma.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 29(4): 605–610.
The article that originally defined the volunteer''s dilemma game.
Babcock, Linda, Maria P. Recalde, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart. 2017. "Gender Differences in Accepting and Receiving Requests for Tasks with Low Promotability." American Economic Review, 107 (3): 714-47.
Studies an example of the ‘volunteer’s dilemma’ in the workplace, where a task is successfully completed if at least one team member volunteers to do it. Using laboratory experiments, finds that teams almost always complete the task, but that there is a large gender difference in volunteering behavior: women volunteer twice as often as men! Argues that women’s tendency to volunteer for necessary tasks that do not advance their careers may help account for the gender promotion gap in many large organizations.
Natanson, Hanna. “Forget what you may have been told. New study says strangers step in to help 90 percent of the time” The Washington Post, September 6, 2019
A recent psychological study of surveillance camera footage from three countries shows that bystanders in actual public conflict aren’t apathetic after all. In 90 percent of these situations, strangers intervened to help victims.
Banerjee, Ritwik and Priyoma Mustafi 2020 Using Social Recognition to Address the Gender Difference in Volunteering for Low Promotability Tasks IZA discussion paper no. 13956.
The authors use a modified volunteer's dilemma game to examine if non-monetary interventions, particularly, social recognition can be used to change the gender norms associated with volunteering for low-promotability tasks. They find that competition for social recognition increases the overall likelihood that someone in a group has volunteered, and can close the volunteering gender gap. The results suggest that public recognition of volunteering can change the default gender norms in organizations and increase efficiency at the same time.