Punishment, reward, and cooperation in a framed field experiment

Abstract

We report a framed field experiment, in which we study the effectiveness of punishment and reward in sustaining cooperation in a social dilemma. Punishments tend to be directed at non-cooperators and rewards are assigned by those who are relatively cooperative. In contrast to the results typically found in laboratory experiments, however, we find that punishments and rewards fail to increase cooperation.JEL Classification: C72, C92, C93.

The perils of peer punishment: Evidence from a common pool resource framed field experiment

“…Such punishment is also observed by Falk et al (2000), Masclet et al (2003), Cinyabuguma et al (2005) and Gächter and Herrmann (2011). Cooperation (here, choosing to use fewer nets) may not be perceived as a social norm enforceable by punishment (Casari and Luini, 2009); thus, there may be other norms-for example, "try to catch as many fish as possible"-that may prevail (Noussair et al, 2014). Hence some punished subjects may view as inappropriate such disapproval for using many nets and respond by increasing their number of nets (or maintaining their choice of the maximum number).…”

“…More generally, the subjects themselves may not expect punishment to induce more cooperative behavior. Carpenter et al (2004), Carpenter (2007, Casari andLuini (2009), Fudenberg andPathak (2010), and Noussair et al (2014) conclude that punishment need not be applied instrumentally to increase cooperation and that subjects have preferences for punishing.…”

Common-pool resources are intrinsically unstable

“…First, it was the first to use a nonlinear payoff function for a CPR experiment. Since the procedure for experiments with nonlinear payoff functions is complicated, many experimental social scientists still use linear payoff functions (Noussair et al 2011;Osés-Eraso and Viladrich-Grau 2011;Botelho et al 2014;Becchetti et al 2015), although some do use nonlinear functions 600 Tatsuyoshi Saijo et al (Rodriguez-Sickert et al 2008;Vyrastekova and Van Soest 2008;Hayo and Vollan 2012;Cason and Gangadharan 2014). Second, the number of appropriators is eight in their experiments, which is unusually high for CPR experiments.…”

“…Second, the number of appropriators is eight in their experiments, which is unusually high for CPR experiments. For example, among the eight papers we surveyed (Rodriguez-Sickert et al 2008;Vyrastekova and Van Soest 2008;Noussair et al 2011;Osés-Eraso and ViladrichGrau 2011;Hayo and Vollan 2012;Botelho et al 2014;Cason and Gangadharan 2014;Becchetti et al 2015), the number of appropriators was four in four papers, five in three papers, and six in one paper. These two properties (i.e.…”

“…In this sense, we found a minimum number of appropriators sufficient to capture the essence of CPR instability. Although several researchers, such as Noussair et al (2011), Osés-Eraso and Viladrich-Grau (2011), and Becchetti et al (2015), use n=4, their production functions are linear. Therefore, the best-response function is flat and the Nash equilibrium is always stable.…”