Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T21:28:45.154Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

More Talk, Less Need for Monitoring: Communication and Deterrence in a Public Good Game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 December 2017

David C. Kingsley
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Lowell. 1 University Ave. Lowell, MA 01854, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Daniel Muise
Affiliation:
Communication Department, Stanford University, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of communication in a public good game with a central authority. The central authority includes a fixed cost that increases with the level of monitoring which in turn determines the level of deterrence. The level of monitoring is both exogenously and endogenously determined. Across three treatments subjects either have no opportunity to communicate, communicate only when the level of monitoring is exogenously imposed, or communicate only when the level of monitoring is endogenously selected. Results suggest that, in both treatments, average earnings are significantly higher with the opportunity to communicate. Most significantly, with the opportunity to communicate prior to endogenous selection, groups practically eliminate monitoring (imposing a low cost, non-deterrent, central authority), while maintaining a high level of contributions. Communication appears to make groups less dependent on institutional deterrence and allows them to reduce the costs of central authority.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Apesteguia, Jose and Maier-Rigaud, Frank P.. 2006. “The Role of Rivalry: Public Goods versus Common-Pool Resources.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50: 646663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia and Grossman, Guy. 2011. “Centralized Sanctioning and Legitimate Authority Promote Cooperation in Humans.” Presented at the National Academy of Sciences 108 (27): 1102311027.Google Scholar
Becker, Gary S. 1968. “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach.” The Journal of Political Economy 76: 169217.Google Scholar
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2002. “Covenants Without Swords, Group Identity, Norms, and Communication in Social Dilemmas.” Rationality and Society, 14 (2): 192228.Google Scholar
Bochet, O., Page, T., and Putterman, L.. 2006. “Communication and Punishment in Voluntary Contribution Experiments.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 60: 1126.Google Scholar
Bouas, Kelly S. and Komorita, S. S.. 1996. “Group Discussion and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22 (11): 11441150.Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Ananish. 2011. “Sustaining Cooperation in Laboratory Public Goods Experiments: A Selective Survey of the Literature.” Experimental Economics, 14 (1): 4783.Google Scholar
Coleman, James. 1993. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, Caleb and Stoddard, Brock. 2017. “Strategic Thinking in Public Goods Games with Teams” (with Caleb Cox) R&R, Journal of Public Economics.Google Scholar
Dal Bò, Pedro, Foster, Andrew, and Putterman, Louis. 2010. “Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy.” American Economic Review 100 (5): 22052229.Google Scholar
Davis, D. D. and Holt, C. A.. 1993. Experimental economics. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Isaac. 1996. “Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 10 (1): 4367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ertan, A., Page, T., and Putterman, L.. 2009. “Who to Punish? Individual Decisions and Majority Rule in Mitigating the Free Rider Problem.” European Economic Review 53: 495511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E. and Gächter, S.. 2000. “Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments.” American Economic Review 90: 980994.Google Scholar
Fischbacher, Urs. 2007. “z-Tree: Zurich Toolbox for Ready-Made Economic Experiments.” Experimental Economics 10 (2): 171178.Google Scholar
Gächter, S., Renner, E., and Sefton, M.. 2008. “The Long-Run Benefits of Punishment.” Science 322: 1510.Google Scholar
Hamman, John R., Weber, Roberto A., and Woon, Jonathan. 2011. “An Experimental Investigation of Electoral Delegation and the Provision of Public Goods.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (4): 738752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrmann, Benedikt, Thöni, Chirstian, and Gächter, Simon. 2008. “Antisocial Punishment Across Societies.” Science 319: 13621367.Google Scholar
Kamei, K., Putterman, L., and Tyran, J.-R.. 2015. “State or Nature? Endogenous Formal Versus Informal Sanctions in the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods.” Experimental Economics 18: 3865.Google Scholar
Kerr, Norbert L. and Kaufman-Gilliland, Cynthia M.. 1994. “Communication, Commitment, and Cooperation in Social Dilemma.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66 (3): 513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingsley, David C. 2015. “Peer Punishment across Payoff Equivalent Public Good and Common Pool Resource Experiments.” Journal of the Economics Science Association 1: 197204.Google Scholar
Kingsley, David C. 2017. “Replication Data for: More Talk, Less Need for Monitoring: Communication and Deterrence in a Public Good Game.” doi:10.7910/DVN/SOJQKM, Harvard Dataverse, V1.Google Scholar
Kingsley, David C. and Liu, Benyuan. 2014. “Cooperation Across Payoff Equivalent Public Good and Common Pool Resource Experiments.” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 51: 544548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingsley, David C. and Brown, Thomas C.. 2016. “Endogenous Institutional Deterrence with Costly Monitoring.” Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 62: 3341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ledyard, J. 1995. Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research Handbook of Experimental Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press chapter, pp. 111194.Google Scholar
Markussen, T., Putterman, L., and Tyran, J.-R.. 2013. “Self-Organization for Collective Action: An Experimental Study of Voting on Sanction Regimes.” Review of Economic Studies 81 (1): 301324.Google Scholar
Mendelberg, Tali. 2002. “The deliberative citizen: Theory and evidence.” Political Decision Making, Deliberation and Participation 6 (1): 151193.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Massachusetts: Harvard Economic Studies Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Orbell, John M., Van de Kragt, Alphons J., and Dawes, Robyn M.. 1988. “Explaining Discussion-Induced Cooperation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (5): 811.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E., Walker, J. and Gardner, R.. 1992. “Covenants With and Without a Sword: Self-Governance is Possible.” The American Political Science Review 86: 404417.Google Scholar
Polinsky, A. Mitchell and Shavell, Steven. 1979. “The Optimal Tradeoff Between the Probability and Magnitude of Fines.” The American Economic Review 69 (5): 880891.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America.” PS: Political Science and Politics 28: 664683.Google Scholar
Putterman, Louis, Tyran, Jean-Robert, and Kamei, Kenju. 2011. “Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes.” Journal of Public Economics 95: 12131222.Google Scholar
Robbett, Andrea. 2016. “Sustaining Cooperation in Heterogeneous Groups.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 132: 121138.Google Scholar
Sally, David. 1995. “Conversation and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas a Meta-Analysis of ExperimentsFrom 1958 to 1992.” Rationality and Society 7 (1): 5892.Google Scholar
Scholz, John T. and Lubell, Mark. 1998. “Trust and Taxpaying: Testing the Heuristic Approach to Collective Action.” American Journal of Political Science, 398417.Google Scholar
Scholz, John T. and Pinney, Neil. 1995. “Duty, Fear, and Tax Compliance: The Heuristic Basis of Citizenship Behavior.” American Journal of Political Science, 490512.Google Scholar
Sigmund, Karl, De Silva, Hannelore, Traulsen, Arne, and Hauert, Christoph. 2010. “Social Learning Promotes Institutions for Governing the Commons.” Nature 466 (7308), 861863.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stigler, George J. 1970. “The Optimum Enforcement of Laws.” Journal of Political Economy 78 (3): 526536.Google Scholar
Sutter, Matthias, Haigner, Stefan, and Kocher, Martin. 2010. “Choosing the Carrot or the Stick? Endogenous Institutional Choice in Social Dilemma Situations.” Review of Economic Studies 77: 15401566.Google Scholar
Tyran, J. R. and Feld, L. P.. 2006. “Achieving Compliance when Legal Sanctions are Non-Deterrent.” Scandanavian Journal of Economics 108: 135156.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Kingsley and Muise supplementary material

Kingsley and Muise supplementary material 1

Download Kingsley and Muise supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 201 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Kingsley and Muise Dataset

Link