Carrots without Bite: On the Ineffectiveness of 'Rewards' in sustaining Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

Jan Stoop (stoop@ese.eur.nl), Daan van Soest and Jana Vyrastekova

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Peer-to-peer sanctions increase cooperation in multi-person social dilemmas (Fehr & Gachter (2000)), but not when subjects have the option to retaliate (Nikiforakis (2008)). One-shot peer-to-peer rewards have been found to enhance efficiency too (Vyrastekova & van Soest (2008), Rand et al. (2009a)), but it is an open question whether the positive impact on cooperation is weakened or strengthened when we allow for counterrewarding. We examine the impact of possible reciprocity in rewarding on cooperation in a non-linear public bad game, and find that efficiency in the social dilemma is equally low as absent any reward options. We hypothesize that subjects are unwilling to sever mutually profitable bilateral exchanges of reward tokens to induce cooperation in the social dilemma, and identify the underlying mechanism by comparing behavior across three matching protocols.

Keywords: Social dilemmas; economic experiments; rewards. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-03-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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