A game-theoretic taxonomy of social dilemmas

Martin Beckenkamp ()

Central European Journal of Operations Research, 2006, vol. 14, issue 3, 337-353

Abstract: Both social psychology and experimental economics empirically investigate social dilemmas. However, these two disciplines sometimes use different notions for very similar scenarios. While it is irrelevant for economists whether an experimental public-good game is conceptualised as a take-some or give-some game – i.e., whether something is conceptualised as produced or extracted – it is not irrelevant for some psychologists: they grasp public-goods games as “give-some” games. And whereas most economists define social dilemmas in reference to a taxonomy of goods, some psychologists think that dominant strategies are a necessary attribute. This paper presents a taxonomy that relies on a formal game-theoretic analysis of social dilemmas, which integrates and clarifies both approaches. Because this taxonomy focuses on the underlying incentive structure, it facilitates the evaluation of experimental results from both social psychology and experimental economics. Copyright Physica-Verlag 2006

Keywords: Experimental games; Social dilemma; Game theory; Public-goods games; Prisoners dilemmas; Common goods games; Take-some games; Give-some games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10100-006-0008-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:cejnor:v:14:y:2006:i:3:p:337-353

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/10100

DOI: 10.1007/s10100-006-0008-5

Access Statistics for this article

Central European Journal of Operations Research is currently edited by Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger

More articles in Central European Journal of Operations Research from Springer, Slovak Society for Operations Research, Hungarian Operational Research Society, Czech Society for Operations Research, Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR), Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research, Croatian Operational Research Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().