In everyday life, we often face a “volunteer’s dilemma (VoD)”—a group situation in which one member has to incur the cost of providing a public good. In the VoD, members of a group may wait for each other to volunteer, and thus, the group may fail to achieve the public good. Previous research has examined the probability of this failure and found that it was lower than theoretically expected. This discrepancy may have been because only material (e.g., money) and not social rewards (e.g., favourable evaluations) were considered in the theoretical expectations. To investigate whether and how people gain social rewards or are evaluated favourably by others in the VoD in everyday life (specifically in workplace contexts), we conducted a scenario-based experiment (N = 582). The results showed that people were evaluated as more moral and competent when they volunteered than when they did not. Furthermore, this was the case especially when all the other group members shirked and when the evaluator was also willing to volunteer. These findings contribute to our current understanding of the way people perceive volunteers and shirkers in the VoD. They also have an implication on people’s motivation to incur a cost for their group in such a situation.

中文翻译：

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志愿者日常生活困境中的社会奖励

在日常生活中，我们经常面临“志愿者困境（VoD）”——一个成员必须承担提供公共物品的成本的群体情况。在视频点播中，一个群体的成员可能会互相等待自愿，因此，该群体可能无法实现公共利益。先前的研究已经检查了这种失败的概率，发现它低于理论上的预期。这种差异可能是因为在理论预期中只考虑了物质（例如金钱）而不考虑社会奖励（例如，有利的评价）。为了调查人们是否以及如何在日常生活中（特别是在工作场所）的视频点播中获得社会奖励或受到他人的好评，我们进行了一个基于场景的实验（N = 582)。结果表明，人们在自愿时比不自愿时被评价为更有道德和能力。此外，尤其是当所有其他小组成员都推卸责任并且评估者也愿意自愿时，情况尤其如此。这些发现有助于我们目前了解人们如何看待视频点播中的志愿者和偷懒者。它们还对人们在这种情况下为他们的团队承担成本的动机产生影响。