Exit, Punishment and Rewards in Commons Dilemmas: An Experimental Study

Giangiacomo Bravo,Flaminio Squazzoni

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069871

Giangiacomo Bravo, Flaminio Squazzoni

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069871

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Abstract

Commons dilemmas are interaction situations where a common good is provided or exploited by a group of individuals so that optimal collective outcomes clash with private interests. Although in these situations, social norms and institutions exist that might help individuals to cooperate, little is known about the interaction effects between positive and negative incentives and exit options by individuals. We performed a modified public good game experiment to examine the effect of exit, rewards and punishment, as well as the interplay between exit and rewards and punishment. We found that punishment had a stronger effect than rewards on cooperation if considered by itself, whereas rewards had a stronger effect when combined with voluntary participation. This can be explained in terms of the ‘framing effect’, i.e., as the combination of exit and rewards might induce people to attach higher expected payoffs to cooperative strategies and expect better behaviour from others.

Highlights

In all cases of public good provision, such as good quality scientific peer review or a clean public beach in a popular place, many individuals are called to pool their private resources for the benefit of the whole group, including those who do not contribute[1,2,3]
In cases of common-pool resource (CPR), such as natural resource exploitation or artificial infrastructure use, individuals benefit by sharing a good where there are significant consumption externalities
None of the treatments were capable of fully stopping the decline in cooperation typical of PG and social dilemma games

Summary

Introduction

In all cases of public good provision, such as good quality scientific peer review or a clean public beach in a popular place, many individuals are called to pool their private resources for the benefit of the whole group, including those who do not contribute[1,2,3]. In cases of common-pool resource (CPR), such as natural resource exploitation or artificial infrastructure use, individuals benefit by sharing a good where there are significant consumption externalities. In these cases, the problem is not whether to contribute to the common pool but how to reduce the exploitation level from it [4,5]. The archetypal model of these social dilemmas is the public good game ( on, PG), where participants are endowed with a fixed sum of money and choose whether to keep it in their own private account ( = defection) or to contribute to the public good ( = cooperation) [6,7]. Since mw1=n, in the case where all participants contribute, everyone would be better off, with a social optimum given by all participants contributing their whole amount

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