Free-riding Issue Research Articles

Investigating the effect of coopetition designs on students' perceived social support in collaborative learning

Social support is often related to successful problem-solving and enhanced achievement. However, limited research on it has been conducted in collaborative learning settings, where research attention has been primarily placed on sophisticated technologies and cognitive domains. Considering existing problems in collaborative learning, including low levels of individual accountability and free rider issues, and the importance of social support and coopetition for collaborative learning, this study investigated the effect of coopetition designs on the development of social support in collaborative learning. A quasi-experiment was conducted in the naturalistic learning setting to explore effects of zero-sum coopetition, social-comparison coopetition, and the collaboration-only design on three subscales of social support (emotional, esteem, and informational social supports). The findings indicated that the two coopetition designs surpassed the collaboration-only design in strengthening social support and academic performance. Social-comparison coopetition further outperformed zero-sum coopetition.

Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

When creating a public good, strategies or mechanisms are required to handle defectors. We first show mathematically and numerically that prior agreements with posterior compensations provide a strategic solution that leads to substantial levels of cooperation in the context of public goods games, results that are corroborated by available experimental data. Notwithstanding this success, one cannot, as with other approaches, fully exclude the presence of defectors, raising the question of how they can be dealt with to avoid the demise of the common good. We show that both avoiding creation of the common good, whenever full agreement is not reached, and limiting the benefit that disagreeing defectors can acquire, using costly restriction mechanisms, are relevant choices. Nonetheless, restriction mechanisms are found the more favourable, especially in larger group interactions. Given decreasing restriction costs, introducing restraining measures to cope with public goods free-riding issues is the ultimate advantageous solution for all participants, rather than avoiding its creation.

More than Just Fear: On the Intricate Interplay between Perceived Neighborhood Disorder, Collective Efficacy, and Action

ABSTRACT:Collective efficacy is defined as social cohesion among neighbors combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good. Through collective efficacy, forms of perceived neighborhood disorder may be successfully targeted. Simultaneously, perceived disorder undermines preconditions for collective efficacy, informal social control, and (collective) action. Most research on this theme has been quantitative, not always clarifying the micro social processes at stake. This also concerns residents’ willingness to intervene and their considerations for intervening or refraining from action. Additionally, most studies have addressed high-poverty neighborhoods, ignoring valuable lessons from more prosperous neighborhoods. This article aims to fill these gaps. We conducted 90 semistructured interviews with residents in six inner-city neighborhoods in The Netherlands. Interview transcript analysis shows how residents’ willingness to intervene is related to public familiarity, communicative skills, and fear. In turn, fear depends on the seriousness of perceived disorder, being outnumbered, previous experiences, and hearsay. We also show ambivalent ways in which social ties affect residents’ willingness to intervene. Social ties may stimulate public familiarity, but also exchange of negative experiences with social control and free rider issues.

Confucianism and the Legalism: A model of the national strategy of governance in ancient China

The Confucian school emphasizes family value, moral persuasions, and personal relations. Under Confucianism, there is a free-rider issue in the provision of efforts. Since national officials are chosen through personal relations, they may not be the most capable. The Legalist school emphasizes the usage of incentives and formal institutions. Under the Legalism, the ruler provides strong incentives to local officials which may lead to side effects because some activities are noncontractible. The cold-blood image of the Legalism may alien citizens. By exploiting the paternalistic relationship between the ruler and the ruled under Confucianism and the strength of institution-building under the Legalism, the ruler may benefit from a combination of Confucianism approach and the Legalism approach as the national strategy of governance. As each strategy has its pros and cons, which strategy of is optimal depends on factors such as the minimum enforceable level of public service and the level of institution building costs.

Confucianism and the Legalism: A Model of the National Strategy of Governance in Ancient China

The Confucianism school emphasizes family value, moral persuasions, and personal relations. Under Confucianism, there is a free-rider issue in the provision of efforts. Since national officials are chosen through personal relations, they may not be the most capable. The Legalism school emphasizes the usage of incentives and formal institutions. Under the Legalism, the ruler provides strong incentives to local officials which may lead to side effects because some activities are noncontractible. The cold-blood image of the Legalism may alien citizens. By exploiting the paternalistic relationship between the ruler and the ruled under Confucianism and the strength of institution-building under the Legalism, the ruler may benefit from a combination of Confucianism approach and the Legalism approach as the national strategy of governance. As each strategy has its pros and cons, which strategy of is optimal depends on factors such as the minimum enforceable level of public service and the level of institution building costs.

Resale Price Maintenance: The Internet Phenomenon and Free Rider Issues

This article looks at Internet retailing and the free rider justification often asserted for resale price maintenance (RPM). It argues that the case for RPM as a means to control free rider problems is not strengthened by the advent of Internet retailers. While the Internet may increase the occurrence of free riding for some products, it may also reduce it for others. In fact, recent marketing studies tend to dispel the popular perception that Internet retailers are frequent free riders and that free riding is necessarily harmful. These new insights call into question the general assumption that free riding must be discouraged. But even if we view free riding from a conventional perspective, RPM may not be the most effective way to induce retailer services. In view of the many benefits of Internet retailing, antitrust law should disfavor a trade restraint that inhibits its growth, such as RPM, if there are alternative means of promoting retailer services that do not present similar risks. Promotional allowances could be such an alternative. The article concludes by explaining why a full rule of reason analysis is unworkable and suggests a rebuttable presumption of illegality as an alternative approach.

The Macroeconomic Costs and Benefits of the EMU and Other Monetary Unions: An Overview of Recent Research

This article provides an overview of recent research into the macroeconomic costs and benefits of monetary unification. We are primarily interested in Europe's monetary union. Given that unification entails the loss of a policy instrument, its potential benefits have to be found elsewhere. Unification may serve as a vehicle for beneficial institutional changes. In particular, it may be a route toward an independent monetary policy, which alleviates the scope for political pressure to relax monetary policy. Unification also eliminates harmful monetary policy spillovers and competitive devaluations. We explore how disagreement between the monetary and fiscal authorities about their policy objectives can lead to extreme macroeconomic outcomes. Further, we pay considerable attention to the desirability (or not) of fiscal constraints and fiscal coordination in a monetary union. Monetary commitment and fiscal free riding play a key role in this regard. Similar free-riding issues also feature prominently in the analysis of how unification influences structural reforms. We end with a brief discussion of monetary unification outside Europe. The cost–benefit trade-off of unification may differ substantially between industrialized and less-developed countries, where differences in fiscal needs and, hence, the reliance on seigniorage revenues may dominate the scope for unification.

Who bears the burden and who receives the gain?—The case of GWRDC R&D investments in the Australian grape and wine industry

AbstractIt is only when R&D levies are invested in the sectors in which they are raised that the distribution of the benefits among industry sectors is exactly the same as the incidence of the levies. This article examines the distributions of both costs and returns from the Australian grape and wine R&D investments and the divergence between the two distributions. The real shares of R&D costs are estimated through the incidence of the levies and compared with the nominal shares. Grape‐growers, winemakers and overseas consumers are shown to receive bigger proportions of gains than their proportions of costs, while the Australian government and other domestic parties as a group bear a much higher proportion of costs than returns. This article discusses implications of results for the equity issue between premium and nonpremium producers, the free‐rider issue for overseas consumers, and the justification of government funding of grape and wine R&D. [EconLit citations: Q16, Q18, and H43]. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 19: 355–366, 2003.

Free Riding and Sales Strategies for the Internet

For many products, Internet sales can free ride off of the promotional effort exerted by brick and mortar retailers, leading manufacturers to attempt to control the availability and pricing of their products over the Internet. We examine three categories of products: fragrances, DVD players, and side‐by‐side refrigerators. Our evidence suggests that manufacturers that limit distribution in the physical world use various mechanisms to limit distribution online. In particular, these manufacturers generally prevent the sale of their products by Internet retailers that offer deep discounts. Furthermore, manufacturer websites tend to charge high prices, suggesting that manufacturers may internalize free rider issues.

A Research Note on the Free-Rider Issue

Iannaccone (1994) proposed that church success results from controlling the free-rider problem and that churches with few free-riders are more likely to provide collective rewards. Using a sample of Middletown residents (N = 567), we tested hypotheses derived from Iannaccone's theory. Our critical variable was respondents estimates of the number of free-riders in their churches We found some evidence consistent with the idea that church success is negatively related to the number of free-riders, but the results were not statistically significant; moreover Catholicism seems to have more free-riders than would be predicted by Iannaccone's theory. The number of free-riders was not related to two collective rewards measured in this study: the absence of noninvolved people at church services and participation in supportive church groups.

The Freerider and the Cartel: Siam and the International Tin Restriction Agreements, 1931–1941

Resource cartels face a fundamental organizational problem. While production control can secure higher prices, these are enjoyed by all producers, regardless of whether they are members of the cartel or not. Those who take the benefits without making a contribution to its costs are freeriders, and they can destroy the conditions under which effective collective action is possible. If resource cartels are to make an important contribution to improving the terms under which peripheral nations participate in the world economy, it is important for them to find ways of resolving the freerider issue.