Conditional Cooperation and Betrayal Aversion

Robin Cubitt, Simon Gaechter (simon.gaechter@nottingham.ac.uk) and Simone Quercia
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Simon Gaechter: Department of Economics, University of Nottingham
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Gächter

No 2015-14, Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Abstract: We investigate whether there is a link between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion. We use a public goods game to classify subjects by type of contribution preference and by belief about the contributions of others; and we measure betrayal aversion for different categories of subject. We find that, among conditional cooperators, only those who expect others to contribute little to the public good are significantly betrayal averse, while there is no evidence of betrayal aversion for those who expect substantial contributions by others. This is consistent with their social risk taking in public goods games, as the pessimistic conditional cooperators tend to avoid contribution to avoid exploitation, whereas the optimistic ones typically contribute to the public good and thus take the social risk of being exploited.

Keywords: public goods game; conditional cooperation; trust; betrayal aversion; exploitation aversion; free riding; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe, nep-soc and nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion (2017)
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:not:notcdx:2015-14

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