Abstract
The literature on team cooperation has neglected the effects of relative kindness intention on cooperation, which we measure by comparing the kindness intentions of an agent to her group members to the kindness shown by other members to this same agent. We argue that the agent’s emotional reaction to material payoff inequity is not constant, but rather affected by her relative kindness intention. Then, we apply the model to team projects with multiple partners and investigate how inequity-aversion and relative kindness intention jointly influence team cooperation. We first consider the case of homogeneous agents, where their marginal productivity levels and technical capacities are the same, and then consider the case of heterogeneous agents, where their marginal productivity levels and technical capacities are not the same. Our results show that inequity-aversion has no effect on effort expenditure in the former case, but does affect it in the latter case. The consideration of relative kindness intention may impact the agents’ optimal cooperative effort expenditure when their technical capacities are different. In addition, it is beneficial for team cooperation, and might not only reduce the negative impact but also enhance the positive impact of inequity-aversion on the agents’ effort expenditures.
Highlights
1.1 Material payoff and relative kindnessProject teams requiring multiple agents from different disciplines have become the subject of extensive research [1,2,3,4]
We examine the effects of two major sources of heterogeneity, namely, technical capacity and marginal productivity, on the willingness to cooperate in multipartner project teams
In contrast to the previous literature reporting that the impact of inequity-averse preferences on cooperation under group-based contract is negative (e.g., [10]), as well as the literature reporting that inequity-aversion promotes cooperation (e.g., [11,31]), we show that the effect of inequity-aversion and the consideration of relative kindness intention in project teams are beneficial for team cooperation when the agents have heterogeneous productivities and homogeneous capacities, or in team projects with high-effort marginal cost
Summary
Project teams requiring multiple agents from different disciplines have become the subject of extensive research [1,2,3,4]. In a theoretical and experimental study, Celen et al [19] stated that “players make judgments about kindness through comparing the kindness of their own with their opponents.” These authors offer a novel definition of kindness as a relative concept. The model implies the hypothesis that, given her kindness intention, the agent with a payoff smaller than the payoffs of others may experience less inequality if the other agents are kind to her, and more inequality if they show no kindness to her This hypothesis is consistent with the findings of Nelson [12], who indicated that people are more willing to accept the inequality caused by nature than that instigated by human behavior. If the agent feels that the other agents are as kind as she is, her sense of inequality would mainly depend on her relative material payoff, and the impact of the kindness intention on her sense of inequity would vanish
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