Inequality, role reversal and cooperation in multiple group membership settings

Abstract

We investigate the role of endowment inequality in a local and global public goods setting with multiple group membership and examine the effect of temporal role reversal on cooperation decisions. Subjects can contribute to a global public good which benefits all subjects and two local public goods which benefit only subjects of either their own group or the group of the other endowment type. Endowment inequality per-se decreases contributions of subjects with a high endowment to the global public good, but increases cooperation of subjects with a low endowment on their local public good, thereby aggravating income disparities. Exogenously induced role reversal for several periods affects cooperation behavior of subjects with a high endowment positively and induces them to contribute more to the global good. Cooperation in unequal environments thus appears to be more stable when all parties have experienced the public goods game from the disadvantageous perspective.

The End of Work is Near, Isn’t It? Survey Evidence on Automation Angst

“…Being concerned about one's own employment prospects comes with increased generosity in donation behavior, while heightened general and distributional concerns (Germany only) reduce donation generosity. The former result speaks in favor of increased sensibility and solidarity with those who are already in a disadvantaged position, as has been argued before in the donation-economics literature such as in Lange et al (2022). The latter finding, by contrast, suggests that, conditional on perceived own risks, concerns that the society as a whole might suffer from automation tends to erode rather than foster prosocial behavior.…”

Cooperation in changing groups

“…However, in many real-life instances of public good provision, there are multiple local groups nested within a larger global group. Such public goods have been labeled multilevel public goods (sometimes also referred to as nested social dilemmas) (Aaldering & Böhm, 2020;Aaldering et al, 2018;Blackwell & McKee, 2003;Böhm et al, 2014;Buchan et al, 2011Buchan et al, , 2009Espinosa et al, 2019;Fellner & Lünser, 2014;Gallier et al, 2019;Israel et al, 2012;Lange et al, 2022;Polzer et al, 2009;Polzer et al, 1999;Wit & Kerr, 2002). In multilevel public goods problems, individuals have to choose to what extent they act in their private interests, cooperate with their own local group (local cooperation), and cooperate with the larger global group (global cooperation).…”

“…Prior experiments on multilevel public goods problems show that also in the lab, global cooperation is often impeded by a tendency for local cooperation, even when global cooperation is collectively more beneficial (Aaldering & Böhm, 2020;Aaldering et al, 2018;Blackwell & McKee, 2003;Böhm et al, 2014;Buchan et al, 2011Buchan et al, , 2009Espinosa et al, 2019;Fellner & Lünser, 2014;Gallier et al, 2019;Israel et al, 2012;Lange et al, 2022;Polzer et al, 2009Polzer et al, , 1999Wit & Kerr, 2002). These experiments employ the multilevel public goods game (sometimes also referred to as a nested social dilemma), in which usually two local groups are nested within a larger global group.…”

“…If people contribute locally instead of globally, a polarized outcome ensues in which two separate local public goods are provided instead of a unified global good. The extent to which people prefer to cooperate locally or globally depends on the returns to both types of cooperation (Blackwell & McKee, 2003;Böhm et al, 2014;Fellner & Lünser, 2014;Gallier et al, 2019), the observability of both types of cooperation (Fellner & Lünser, 2014), resource inequality (Lange et al, 2022), framing (Polzer et al, 1999), and social categorization (Wit & Kerr, 2002). Similar to single-group public goods experiments, cooperation decays over time in multilevel public goods experiments, and the decay is especially noticeable for global cooperation (Blackwell & McKee, 2003;Fellner & Lünser, 2014).…”

“…Even if punishment promotes cooperation in multilevel public goods problems, there is no guarantee that it leads to a collectively efficient form of cooperation. In multilevel public goods problems as strictly defined, global cooperation is more efficient than local cooperation, which in turn is more efficient than no cooperation at all (Blackwell & McKee, 2003;Böhm et al, 2014;Buchan et al, 2011Buchan et al, , 2009Gallier et al, 2019;Lange et al, 2022;Wit & Kerr, 2002). Hence, if punishment promotes local cooperation over global cooperation, it leads to a collectively inefficient and polarized form of cooperation (in which two separate local goods are provided instead of a unified global good).…”