 The role of payoff parameters for cooperation in the one-shot Prisoner's DilemmaSimon Gächter, Kyeongtae Lee, Martin Sefton and Till O. Weber European Economic Review, 2024, vol. 166, issue C Abstract: The Prisoner's Dilemma is arguably the most important model of social dilemmas, but our knowledge about how its material payoff structure affects cooperation is incomplete. We investigate the effect of variation in material payoffs on cooperation in one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma games. We report results from three experiments (N = 1,993): in a preliminary experiment, we vary the payoffs over a large range. In our first main experiment (Study 1), we present a novel design that varies payoffs orthogonally in a within-subjects design. Our second main experiment, Study 2, investigates the orthogonal variation of payoffs in a between-subjects design. In a complementary analysis we also study the closely related payoff indices of normalized loss and gain, and the K-index. A robust finding of our experiments is that cooperation increases with the gains of mutual cooperation over mutual defection. Keywords: Prisoner's Dilemma; Cooperation; Payoff parameters; Temptation; Risk; Efficiency; Normalized gain; Normalized loss; K-index; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:166:y:2024:i:c:s0014292124000825 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104753 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
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