Abstract

The sharing of valuable information is at the root of both economic growth and societal welfare. However, individuals and organizations face a social dilemma when deciding whether to share information with others: while sharing can create positive externalities, it may also reduce one’s competitive advantage. We present an incentivized game to study the effect of two social factors on individuals’ willingness to share information: reputational concerns arising in repeated interactions and the number of social connections. Our results point to limits of repeated interactions as a factor to motivate sharing of valuable information — we find that reputation increases information sharing, but only when the number of connections is low. We discuss some behavioral mechanisms that could drive our results.

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