Contributions to public goods, such as nature areas, are often made by private actors, as well as governmental agencies. Typically, the motivation of citizens to voluntarily contribute depends on how the distribution of such tasks has evolved between public and private actors, and wider contextual factors. Therefore, it is unclear whether decreased public spending on nature areas affects private funding. We conduct an economic experiment in The Hague Forest in the Netherlands and ask citizens to perform a task that generates funding for the forest. In the treatment condition, we describe the ongoing policy changes, which implies less state funding and greater dependency on private actors. We find that highlighting a greater need for private funding reduces individual contributions significantly, which is mostly due to a drop in motivation of frequent visitors. Overall, our study suggests that decreasing public spending may have unexpected repercussions on citizens’ motivation to contribute.

中文翻译：

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公共支出减少如何影响公民为自然保护做出贡献的动力？

对公共物品（例如自然区域）的贡献通常是由私人行为者以及政府机构做出的。通常，公民自愿贡献的动机取决于公共和私人参与者之间此类任务的分配如何演变，以及更广泛的背景因素。因此，尚不清楚自然地区公共支出的减少是否会影响私人资金。我们在荷兰海牙森林进行了一项经济实验，并要求公民执行一项为森林筹集资金的任务。在治疗条件中，我们描述了正在进行的政策变化，这意味着国家资金的减少和对私人参与者的更大的依赖。我们发现，强调对私人资金的更大需求会显着减少个人捐款，这主要是由于常客动机下降所致。总体而言，我们的研究表明，公共支出的减少可能会对公民的捐款动机产生意想不到的影响。