Social learning and voluntary cooperation among like-minded people

• 成果类型: Article; Proceedings Paper
• 署名作者: Gächter, S; Thöni, C
• 署名单位: University of Nottingham; University of St Gallen
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1162/jeea.2005.3.2-3.303
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 303-314
• 关键词: punishment; BEHAVIOR

摘要

Many people contribute to public goods but stop doing so once they experience free riding. We test the hypothesis that groups whose members know that they are composed only of like-minded cooperators are able to maintain a higher cooperation level than the most cooperative, randomly composed groups. Our experiments confirm this hypothesis. We also predict that groups of like-minded free riders do not cooperate. Yet, we find a high level of strategic cooperation that eventually collapses. Our results underscore the importance of group composition and social learning by heterogeneously motivated agents to understand the dynamics of cooperation and free riding.