Free riders or easy riders?: An examination of the voluntary provision of public radio

This paper tests the widely accepted hypothesis that when a pure public goo d is voluntarily provided incentives to free ride increase with the number of individuals consuming the good. Specifically, I use unique data on the n umber of listeners and contributors to public radio to test two hypotheses. First I test whether the proportion of contributors falls as group size in creases and second I test whether contributions per contributor fails as gr oup size increases. I find that increases in group size result in significa ntly more free riding. However, I also find that group size has no effect o n contributions per contributor.