Indirect Reciprocity, Resource Sharing, and Environmental Risk: Evidence from Field Experiments in Siberia.

E Lance Howe,Drew Gerkey,James J Murphy,Colin Thor West

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0158940

Abstract

Integrating information from existing research, qualitative ethnographic interviews, and participant observation, we designed a field experiment that introduces idiosyncratic environmental risk and a voluntary sharing decision into a standard public goods game. Conducted with subsistence resource users in rural villages on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Northeast Siberia, we find evidence consistent with a model of indirect reciprocity and local social norms of helping the needy. When participants are allowed to develop reputations in the experiments, as is the case in most small-scale societies, we find that sharing is increasingly directed toward individuals experiencing hardship, good reputations increase aid, and the pooling of resources through voluntary sharing becomes more effective. We also find high levels of voluntary sharing without a strong commitment device; however, this form of cooperation does not increase contributions to the public good. Our results are consistent with previous experiments and theoretical models, suggesting strategic risks tied to rewards, punishments, and reputations are important. However, unlike studies that focus solely on strategic risks, we find the effects of rewards, punishments, and reputations are altered by the presence of environmental factors. Unexpected changes in resource abundance increase interdependence and may alter the costs and benefits of cooperation, relative to defection. We suggest environmental factors that increase interdependence are critically important to consider when developing and testing theories of cooperation

Highlights

Survival of small-scale subsistence-dependent communities often depends upon whether individuals can successfully overcome the collective action problem
We investigate how environmental risk affects these strategic dynamics of reputation and indirect reciprocity
Introducing idiosyncratic environmental risk in the social dilemma increased interdependence, and people responded by channeling resources to those in need, rewarding individuals for cooperation, and withholding support from individuals who did not cooperate

Summary

Introduction

Survival of small-scale subsistence-dependent communities often depends upon whether individuals can successfully overcome the collective action problem ( known as a social dilemma). Because individual time allocation decisions were common knowledge, participants could use sharing as a mechanism to reward others for contributing to the group activity in the current period or to indirectly punish non-cooperators by withholding sharing, increasing the cost of defection relative to the Baseline Treatment.

Results

Conclusion