Culture and Cooperation

Simon Gaechter, Benedikt Herrmann and Christian Thöni
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Gächter

No 3070, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Does the cultural background influence the success with which genetically unrelated individuals cooperate in social dilemma situations? In this paper we provide an answer by analyzing the data of Herrmann et al. (Science 2008, pp. 1362-1367), who study cooperation and punishment in sixteen subject pools from six different world cultures (as classified by Inglehart & Baker (American Sociological Review 2000, pp. 19-51)). We use analysis of variance to disentangle the importance of cultural background relative to individual heterogeneity and group-level differences in cooperation. We find that culture has a substantial influence on the extent of cooperation, in addition to individual heterogeneity and group-level differences identified by previous research. The significance of this result is that cultural background has a substantial influence on cooperation in otherwise identical environments. This is particularly true in the presence of punishment opportunities.

Keywords: human cooperation; punishment; culture; experimental public good games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D64 D79 H41 Z10 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (105)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp3070.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Culture and Cooperation (2010)
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:ces:ceswps:_3070

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().