Experimental Evidence
Gneezy, Haruvy, and Yafe (2004) tested these results in a field experiment. Groups of six diners faced different billing arrangements. As predicted, subjects consume more when the bill is split equally than when they have to pay individually. Consumption is highest when the meal is free. Finally, members of some groups had to pay only one sixth of their individual costs. There was no difference between the amount consumed by these groups and those splitting the total cost of the meal equally. As the private cost of increased consumption is the same for both treatments but splitting the cost imposes a burden on other group members, this indicates that participants did not take the welfare of others into account when making their choices. This contrasts to a large number of laboratory experiments where subjects face analytically similar choices but the context is more abstract.
Read more about this topic: Unscrupulous Diner's Dilemma
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