27 November 2020
The research paper “The volunteer’s dilemma explains the bystander effect” by Pol Campos-Mercade
has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (JEBO).
In the paper, he studies whether the volunteer’s dilemma is an adequate model to study the bystander effect, which is the phenomenon that people are less likely to help others when they are in a group than when they are alone. In line with the predictions of the model, he finds in an experiment that people are both less likely to help and help later when they are in larger groups. However, the person in need is better off in larger groups. He concludes that the volunteer’s dilemma is a sensible way to model situations in which someone is in need of help.