Conflicts between individuals’ and collective interests are ubiquitous in social life. Numerous experimental studies have investigated the resolution of such conflicts using public good games with either continuous or step-level payoff functions. A conceptual analysis using both classic game theory and social exchange theory shows that these two types of games are fundamentally different. A continuous function game is a social dilemma in that it contains a conflict between individual and collective interests whereas a step-level game is primarily a social coordination game. Thus, we conclude that one can not safely generalize results from step-level to continuous form games. Additionally, our analysis shows that the distinction between continuous and single-step games can be blurred by segmenting a continuous function into steps or adding steps to a single-step game. We identify characteristics of the payoff function that conceptually mark the transition from a dilemma to a coordination problem.
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