Conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion

Robin Cubitt, Simon Gächter and Simone Quercia

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017, vol. 141, issue C, 110-121

Abstract: We investigate whether there is an association between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion, two phenomena that we conjecture share common psychological characteristics despite having been studied largely separately in the previous literature. We use a public goods game to categorize subjects by type of contribution preference and we measure betrayal aversion for different categories of subject. We report three studies, using two different methods to measure betrayal aversion: a standard elicitation with monetary incentives and a novel scenario-based measure that we argue addresses concerns about the standard measure. We find strong and robust evidence of an association between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion in the scenario-based measures but not in the standard measure.

Keywords: Public goods game; Conditional cooperation; Trust; Betrayal aversion; Exploitation aversion; Free riding; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D03 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Conditional Cooperation and Betrayal Aversion (2015)
Working Paper: Conditional Cooperation and Betrayal Aversion (2015)
Working Paper: Conditional Cooperation and Betrayal Aversion (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:141:y:2017:i:c:p:110-121

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.06.013

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