What makes cooperation precarious?

Christoph Engel and Bettina Rockenbach

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2024, vol. 101, issue C

Abstract: Although most people are not outright selfish, cooperation frequently fails. Fischbacher and Gächter (2010) explain the well-established decline of contributions in repeated public good games with a genuine imperfection in conditional cooperation. Reanalyzing their data, we offer a more nuanced explanation. Conditional cooperators are nearly perfect, when others cooperate as well. Yet conditional cooperators strongly react to negative experiences, chiefly caused by selfish individuals. These bad experiences are the main driver for the imperfection in conditional cooperation and thus of the downward trend in contributions in repeated public good games.

Keywords: Conditional cooperation; Beliefs; Public good (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D62 D63 D64 D83 D91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:101:y:2024:i:c:s0167487024000205

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2024.102712

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