The role of peer reward and punishment for public goods problems in a localized society

Abstract

Cooperation in social dilemmas can be sustained if individuals are effectively rewarded or punished from peers within the group. However, as group size increases, we inevitably face localization, in which a global group is divided into several localized groups. in such societies, members can reward and punish only neighbors within the same localized group, while cooperation for social dilemmas should be solved through global group involvement. in this situation, the global group and the local group are not always equal in terms of welfare, and situations can arise in which cooperation is beneficial for the global group but not for the local group. We predict that in such a locally inefficient situation, peer reward and punishment cannot function to sustain global cooperation. We conducted an experiment in which 16 group members played a public goods game incorporating peer reward and punishment. We manipulated the range of peer reward and punishment (only local members/all global members) and payoff structure (locally efficient/locally inefficient). We found that high cooperation was not achieved and that peer reward and punishment did not function when, and only when, the group was divided into localized groups and the payoff structure was locally inefficient.

Reward, punishment, and prosocial behavior: Recent developments and implications

“…Reward is typically targeted at prosocial actors, whereas punishment is more often levelled at free riders in social interactions [8][9][10]. Early research focused mainly on whether reward and punishment can increase prosocial behavior, often in laboratory experiments using social dilemma paradigms (e.g., public goods game; see Figure 1 for illustrations) [11,12], and a large-scale meta-analysis indicated that reward and punishment have similar-sized positive effects on prosocial behavior [7]. Yet, a closer examination of existing studies shows mixed evidence [10,13], suggesting that there might be boundary conditions for reward and punishment to be effective.…”

Intergenerational sustainability is enhanced by taking the perspective of future generations

“…A social dilemma refers to a situation where every individual in a group or society behaves according to her self-interest without cooperating with one another, leading to a failure of maximizing the social welfare 1 . The provisions of public goods and common pool resources are considered to be intra-and inter-generational social dilemmas, and literature finds that communication enhances cooperation, leading to Pareto improvement and socially optimal outcomes [2][3][4][5][6] . The long-run survival of humankind on Earth is claimed to depend on whether or not we can resolve intergenerational dilemmas and maintain resources by making communication and cooperation across different generations, i.e., intergenerational sustainability (IS) problems [7][8][9] .…”

Reward versus punishment: averting the tragedy of the commons in eco-evolutionary dynamics

“…Both reward [16] and punishment [17] can initiate the first seed of cooperation for it to take over globally. Both are incapable of achieving global cooperation where the population is divided into localized subgroups, and the payoffs are locally inefficient [18]. There are some subtle differences also, e.g., rewarding those who reward has been shown to be preferred to punishing those who do not punish [19,20].…”