Ostracism and the Provision of a Public Good - Experimental Evidence

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

doi:10.2139/ssrn.869208

Cited by 39 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…In closing, we note that our focus on dynamic partner updating complements previous experimental work that has explored related mechanisms for increasing cooperation, such as punishment (36), reward (6), assortative group formation (21), and ostracism (22,37). Although clearly analogous in some respects, dynamic partner updating is distinct in others.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Cooperation and assortativity with dynamic partner updating

Wang

Suri

Watts

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

191

219

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The natural tendency for humans to make and break relationships is thought to facilitate the emergence of cooperation. In particular, allowing conditional cooperators to choose with whom they interact is believed to reinforce the rewards accruing to mutual cooperation while simultaneously excluding defectors. Here we report on a series of human subjects experiments in which groups of 24 participants played an iterated prisoner's dilemma game where, critically, they were also allowed to propose and delete links to players of their own choosing at some variable rate. Over a wide variety of parameter settings and initial conditions, we found that dynamic partner updating significantly increased the level of cooperation, the average payoffs to players, and the assortativity between cooperators. Even relatively slow update rates were sufficient to produce large effects, while subsequent increases to the update rate had progressively smaller, but still positive, effects. For standard prisoner's dilemma payoffs, we also found that assortativity resulted predominantly from cooperators avoiding defectors, not by severing ties with defecting partners, and that cooperation correspondingly suffered. Finally, by modifying the payoffs to satisfy two novel conditions, we found that cooperators did punish defectors by severing ties, leading to higher levels of cooperation that persisted for longer.network science | dynamic networks | web-based experiments W hy, and under what circumstances, presumptively selfish individuals cooperate is a question of longstanding interest to social science (1, 2) and one that has been studied extensively in laboratory experiments, often as some variant of a public goods game (also called a voluntary contribution mechanism) or a prisoner's dilemma (see refs. 2 and 3 for surveys). One broadly replicated result from this literature is that in unmodified, finitely repeated games cooperation levels typically start around 50-60% and steadily decline to around 10% in the final few rounds (2). The explanation for this decline is that when conditional cooperators, who are thought to constitute as much as 50% of the population (4), are forced to interact with a heterogeneous mix of other types, in particular free riders, the conditional cooperators tend to reduce their contributions over time (3).Previous work has shown that explicit enforcement mechanisms such as punishment (5) and reward (6) can alleviate the observed decline in cooperation in fixed groups. Here we investigate a related but distinct mechanism that exploits a wellknown feature of human social interactions-namely that they change over time, as individuals form new relationships or sever existing ones (7). By allowing participants engaged in a repeated game of cooperation to update their interaction partners dynamically, cooperation levels might be enhanced in two ways. First, conditional cooperators could implicitly punish defectors by denying them a partner, thereby encouraging potential defectors to cooperate. Second, conditional coope...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Cooperation and assortativity with dynamic partner updating

Wang

Suri

Watts

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

191

219

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“…A detailed analyses show that distribution of types is stable across our treatments. Thus, given that different institutions such as monetary punishment (e.g., Fehr and Gächter, 2000), social disapproval (e.g., Masclet et al, 2003), exclusion (e.g., Cinyabuguma et al, 2005;Maier-Rigaud et al, 2010) and disclosure have different impact on individuals' behaviour, it seems important to better understand the impact on the distribution of contribution types. Thus, we need to better understand why some individuals who are classified as one specific contribution type in a standard public goods experiment behave differently when certain institutions are introduced, or, in other words, what makes it worthwhile for them to change, and to be able to explain these changes by motivations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conditional cooperation and disclosure in developing countries

Martinsson

Pham-Khanh

Villegas-Palacio

2013

Journal of Economic Psychology

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Understanding the motivations behind people's voluntary contributions to public goods is crucial for the broader issues of economic and social development. By using the experimental design of Fischbacher et al. (2001), we investigate the distribution of contribution types in two developing countries with very high collectivism rating -Colombia and Vietnam -and compare our findings with those previously found in developed countries. We also investigate the effect of introducing disclosure of contribution on the distribution of contribution types and on the contribution itself. Overall, our experiments show that the distribution of contribution types remains unaffected by the disclosure of contributions and, on average, is similar both in the two countries and when compared with previous findings with the exception of proportion of free-riders. JEL classification: C72; C92; H41.

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“…Examples of experimental research testing the effectiveness of such institutions include communication (e.g., Isaac and Walker, 1988), advice (Chaudhuri et al 2006), peer sanctions (e.g., Fehr and Gächter, 2000), formal sanctions meted out by an authority (e.g. Tyran and Feld, 2006), redistribution (Sausgruber and Tyran, 2007), tax and subsidy mechanisms (Falkinger et al, 2000), selection of group members (Gunnthorsdottir et al, 2010), ostracism (Maier-Rigaud et al, 2010), among others. 2 We refer to intergroup competition in cases where group membership is fixed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competition, Cooperation, and Collective Choice

2012

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 6620 June 2012 ABSTRACT Competition, Cooperation, and Collective ChoiceThe ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition, which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the competitive scheme fosters cooperation. Competition is popular, but the electoral outcome depends strongly on specific voting rules of institutional choice. If the majority decides, competition is almost always adopted. If likely losers from competition have veto power, it is often not, and substantial gains in efficiency are foregone.JEL Classification: D72, J33, H41

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Ostracism and the Provision of a Public Good - Experimental Evidence

Cited by 39 publications

References 37 publications

Cooperation and assortativity with dynamic partner updating

Cooperation and assortativity with dynamic partner updating

Conditional cooperation and disclosure in developing countries

Competition, Cooperation, and Collective Choice

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