The magnitude and nature of the COVID-19 pandemic prevents public health policies from relying on coercive enforcement. Practicing social distancing, wearing masks and staying at home becomes ...voluntary and conditional on the behavior of others. We present the results of a large-scale survey experiment in nine countries with representative samples of the population. We find that both empirical expectations (what others do) and normative expectations (what others approve of) play a significant role in compliance, beyond the effect of any other individual or group characteristic. In our vignette experiment, respondents evaluate the likelihood of compliance with social distancing and staying at home of someone similar to them in a hypothetical scenario. When empirical and normative expectations of individuals are high, respondents' evaluation of the vignette's character's compliance likelihood goes up by 55% (relative to the low expectations condition). Similar results are obtained when looking at self-reported compliance among those with high expectations. Our results are moderated by individuals' trust in government and trust in science. Holding expectations high, the effect of trusting science is substantial and significant in our vignette experiment (22% increase in compliance likelihood), and even larger in self-reported compliance (76% and 127% increase before and after the lockdown). By contrast, trusting the government only generates modest effects. At the aggregate level, the country-level trust in science, and not in government, becomes a strong predictor of compliance.
This research examined the question of whether the psychology of social identity can motivate cooperation in the context of a global collective. Our data came from a multinational study of choice ...behavior in a multilevel public-goods dilemma conducted among samples drawn from the general populations of the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina, South Africa, and Iran. Results demonstrate that an inclusive social identification with the world community is a meaningful psychological construct that plays a role in motivating cooperation that transcends parochial interests. Self-reported identification with the world as a whole predicts behavioral contributions to a global public good beyond what is predicted from expectations about what other people are likely to contribute. Furthermore, global social identification is conceptually distinct from general attitudes about global issues, and has unique effects on cooperative behavior.
The standard approach to nominal illusion in Economics sees it as a transitory phenomenon, as economic agents eventually see through the nominal veil, making the right choices. Recent empirical ...studies suggest that money illusion may persist, distorting real prices in a variety of economic environments, including the housing market and the stock market. In this paper, we explore the emergence and persistence of nominal illusion in an experimental entry game where firms must choose which local market to enter, and then compete in prices. All local markets are equivalent in real terms and they only differ in the currency the price competition is run under. Our experimental results show a positive, persistent and monotone effect of the nominal exchange rate on market prices, statistically significant for large enough exchange rate. We provide an explanation in terms of players simplifying the choice set using discrete grids.
Competition between groups is ubiquitous in social and economic life, and typically occurs between groups that are not created equal. Here we experimentally investigate the implications of this ...general observation on the unfolding of symmetric and asymmetric competition between groups that are either homogeneous or heterogeneous in the ability of their members to contribute to the success of the group. Our main finding is that relative to the benchmark case in which two homogeneous compete against each other, heterogeneity within groups per se has no discernable effect on competition, while introducing heterogeneity between groups leads to a significant intensification of conflict as well as increased volatility, thereby reducing earnings of contest participants and increasing inequality. We further find that heterogeneous groups share the labor much more equally than predicted by theory, and that in asymmetric contests group members change the way in which they condition their efforts on those of their peers. Implications for contest designers are discussed.
Globalization and human cooperation Buchan, Nancy R; Grimalda, Gianluca; Wilson, Rick ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
03/2009, Letnik:
106, Številka:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Globalization magnifies the problems that affect all people and that require large-scale human cooperation, for example, the overharvesting of natural resources and human-induced global warming. ...However, what does globalization imply for the cooperation needed to address such global social dilemmas? Two competing hypotheses are offered. One hypothesis is that globalization prompts reactionary movements that reinforce parochial distinctions among people. Large-scale cooperation then focuses on favoring one's own ethnic, racial, or language group. The alternative hypothesis suggests that globalization strengthens cosmopolitan attitudes by weakening the relevance of ethnicity, locality, or nationhood as sources of identification. In essence, globalization, the increasing interconnectedness of people worldwide, broadens the group boundaries within which individuals perceive they belong. We test these hypotheses by measuring globalization at both the country and individual levels and analyzing the relationship between globalization and individual cooperation with distal others in multilevel sequential cooperation experiments in which players can contribute to individual, local, and/or global accounts. Our samples were drawn from the general populations of the United States, Italy, Russia, Argentina, South Africa, and Iran. We find that as country and individual levels of globalization increase, so too does individual cooperation at the global level vis-à-vis the local level. In essence, "globalized" individuals draw broader group boundaries than others, eschewing parochial motivations in favor of cosmopolitan ones. Globalization may thus be fundamental in shaping contemporary large-scale cooperation and may be a positive force toward the provision of global public goods.
•We experimentally design an incentive mechanism “excludability” for team environments.•We implement excludability in three experimental team environments.•We provide evidence of how the incentive ...mechanism works in the laboratory.•We find that excludability is a very effective team incentive mechanism.•We discuss our findings in a theoretical model of reciprocity.
Exclusion has long been employed as a common disciplinary measure against defectors, both at work and in social life. In this paper, we study the effect of excludability – exclusion of the lowest contributor – on contributions in three different team production settings. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that excludability increases contributions. Excludability is particularly effective in production settings where the average or maximum effort determines team production. In these settings, we observe almost immediate convergence to full contribution. In settings where the minimum effort determines team production, excludability leads to a large increase in contributions only if the value of the excluded individual's contribution to the public good is redistributed among the included individuals.
When groups compete for resources, some groups will be more successful than others, forcing out less successful groups. Group-level selection is the most extreme form of group competition, where the ...weaker group ceases to exist, becoming extinct. We implement group-level selection in a controlled laboratory experiment in order to study its impact on human cooperation. The experiment uses variations on the standard linear public goods game. Group-level selection operates through competition for survival: the least successful, lowest-earning groups become extinct, in the sense that they no longer are able to play the game. Additional control treatments include group comparison without extinction, and extinction of the least successful individuals across groups. We find that group-level extinction produces very high contributions to the provision of the public good, while group comparison alone or individual extinction fail to cause higher contributions. Our results provide stark evidence that group-level selection enhances within-group cooperation.
To develop new materials for Al/air batteries, the evaluation and characterisation of commercial aluminium alloys, namely, Al2000, Al2000Clad and Al7000, as anodes in alkaline electrolyte batteries ...has been performed. Their self-corrosion rate, hydrogen evolution rate and electrochemical properties, including open circuit potentials, polarisation characteristics and potentiodynamic measurements, were examined in a 4 M KOH solution. Among the tested alloys, Al2000 was found to be the most promising because it exhibits a high open circuit potential, a good anode efficiency and a minimum corrosion rate. Al2000/NiOOH and Al2000/air batteries were tested. Electrolyte concentrations between 0.01 and 4 M KOH were studied, and discharge currents between 0.8 and 20 mA cm
−2
were imposed to analyse the evolution of the E
cell
. Conversely, the Al7000 alloy exhibited the highest corrosion rate and H
2
evolution compared to the other alloys.
•We experimentally study the provision of local and global public goods using natural ethno-linguistic groups in two bilingual locations in Spain: Bilbao and Valencia, with and without a historic ...group conflict.•Our results show that diversity (both groups interact) decreases contributions to global public goods in Bilbao and increases it in Valencia, relative to homogeneous settings (participants speak the same language).•We identify the roots of decreased cooperation in overoptimistic empirical beliefs about diversity in Valencia (consistent with out-group favoritism) and discriminatory normative beliefs in Bilbao (consistent with out-group discrimination).•Consistently, conditional cooperation is stronger in diverse groups in Valencia and inexistent in diverse groups in Bilbao (being similar in homogeneous groups in both locations).•We document how norms associated to tolerance to discrimination are exacerbated by negative news about the out-group in Bilbao while positive news in Valencia have a modest positive effect.
We study ethno-linguistic diversity in a lab-in-the-field experiment in two bilingual societies, with (Bilbao, in the North of Spain) and without group conflict (Valencia, in the East). Participants from two ethno-linguistic cultures interact with other participants in Homogeneous (no diversity) or Mixed (ethno-linguistic diversity) environments. Participants allocate resources in a nested public goods game with a local and a global public good. By design, by not contributing to the global (and efficient) public good participants exclude the out- group from the benefits of their contribution. Our results show that while diversity reduces contributions to the global public good in Bilbao, it does not have a negative effect in Valencia. We interpret the results with a second experiment eliciting social norms, with different subjects, and find that the positive (negative) effects of diversity in Valencia (Bilbao) are linked to optimistic empirical expectations (normative discrimination). We also show how the prevalence of discriminatory norms is sensitive to additional information about behavior.
Experimental and empirical evidence identifies social preferences and proposes competing models of such preferences. We find that participants match the contributions of others in the voluntary ...contribution mechanism (VCM). We also examine a game with different equilibria, the weakest link mechanism (WLM). Here, in contrast, participants match the minimum contribution of others.
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