Ostracism and the provision of a public good: experimental evidence

Maier-Rigaud, Frank P.; Martinsson, Peter; Staffiero, Gianandrea

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2009.11.001

Cited by 94 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The results presented here are in accordance with the outcomes of different behavioural commitment experiments [6,19,28,29]. High levels of cooperation were observed in a PGG experiment where a binding agreement, which was enabled through a prior communication stage among the members of the group, could be arranged before the PGG interaction occurred [6].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Furthermore, PGG experiments where exclusion of disapproved members (for example, through voting) is allowed, exhibit a high level of contribution and commitment [28,29]. But therein exclusion is carried out after the PGG takes place, towards the observed non-contributors, as in the model of Sasaki & Uchida [39], which is different from our model where restriction occurs before the game takes place.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 61%

“…But therein exclusion is carried out after the PGG takes place, towards the observed non-contributors, as in the model of Sasaki & Uchida [39], which is different from our model where restriction occurs before the game takes place. This suggests that social exclusion or ostracism, even when it requires an additional cost and/or has a reduced effect in terms of the restriction, is an important mechanism for promoting group cooperation [26,29]. However, we envisage that exclusion imposed through arranging prior commitment as in this work may be more suitable in the case where there is rivalry in the game, as is the case for common-pool resource games [8], for in that case posterior restriction would not hinder the participating players in collecting their benefit.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

Pereira

Lenaerts

2015

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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When creating a public good, strategies or mechanisms are required to handle defectors. We first show mathematically and numerically that prior agreements with posterior compensations provide a strategic solution that leads to substantial levels of cooperation in the context of public goods games, results that are corroborated by available experimental data. Notwithstanding this success, one cannot, as with other approaches, fully exclude the presence of defectors, raising the question of how they can be dealt with to avoid the demise of the common good. We show that both avoiding creation of the common good, whenever full agreement is not reached, and limiting the benefit that disagreeing defectors can acquire, using costly restriction mechanisms, are relevant choices. Nonetheless, restriction mechanisms are found the more favourable, especially in larger group interactions. Given decreasing restriction costs, introducing restraining measures to cope with public goods free-riding issues is the ultimate advantageous solution for all participants, rather than avoiding its creation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 61%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

Pereira

Lenaerts

2015

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…In addition to depending on the number of norm followers in the community, the severity of social sanctioning is also influenced by equity considerations, leading norm followers to act more strongly against individuals extracting well above the accepted norm (and thus receiving much higher pay-offs [35,36]). Experimental research has shown that the degree to which individuals resent free-riders increases with the ensuing income gap [28].…”

Section: A Model Of Norm-driven Cooperation In the Commons (A) Socialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

2016

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Sustainable use of common-pool resources such as fish, water or forests depends on the cooperation of resource users that restrain their individual extraction to socially optimal levels. Empirical evidence has shown that under certain social and biophysical conditions, self-organized cooperation in the commons can evolve. Global change, however, may drastically alter these conditions. We assess the robustness of cooperation to environmental variability in a stylized model of a community that harvests a shared resource. Community members follow a norm of socially optimal resource extraction, which is enforced through social sanctioning. Our results indicate that both resource abundance and a small increase in resource variability can lead to collapse of cooperation observed in the no-variability case, while either scarcity or large variability have the potential to stabilize it. The combined effects of changes in amount and variability can reinforce or counteract each other depending on their size and the initial level of cooperation in the community. If two socially separate groups are ecologically connected through resource leakage, cooperation in one can destabilize the other. These findings provide insights into possible effects of global change and spatial connectivity, indicating that there is no simple answer as to their effects on cooperation and sustainable resource use.

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“…Arguably, such partner choice based on past decisions is an important feature of human social interactions (e.g. friendship and alliances) [34][35][36], and might also have been an important driving force for cooperation during human evolutionary history [37]. The question that arises now is this: why would defectors not invest in a profitable reward fund of their own?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of anti-social rewarding and its countermeasures in public goods games

Santos

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Cooperation in joint enterprises can easily break down when self-interests are in conflict with collective benefits, causing a tragedy of the commons. In such social dilemmas, the possibility for contributors to invest in a common pool-rewards fund, which will be shared exclusively among contributors, can be powerful for averting the tragedy, as long as the second-order dilemma (i.e. withdrawing contribution to reward funds) can be overcome (e.g. with second-order sanctions). However, the present paper reveals the vulnerability of such pool-rewarding mechanisms to the presence of reward funds raised by defectors and shared among them (i.e. anti-social rewarding), as it causes a cooperation breakdown, even when secondorder sanctions are possible. I demonstrate that escaping this social trap requires the additional condition that coalitions of defectors fare poorly compared with pro-socials, with either (i) better rewarding abilities for the latter or (ii) reward funds that are contingent upon the public good produced beforehand, allowing groups of contributors to invest more in reward funds than groups of defectors. These results suggest that the establishment of cooperation through a collective positive incentive mechanism is highly vulnerable to anti-social rewarding and requires additional countermeasures to act in combination with second-order sanctions.

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Ostracism and the provision of a public good: experimental evidence

Cited by 94 publications

References 45 publications

Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

The evolution of anti-social rewarding and its countermeasures in public goods games

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