Project info
Work package
- Inclusion
- Theory
Sustainability threat
- External Shocks
Challenge
- Accommodating newcomers
Study info
Description of Study
Peer punishment is regarded as an important element in sustaining human cooperation for public good provision. Many behavioral experiments have shown that public good provision is higher if cooperation norms can be enforced by peer punishment. However, these experiments predominantly focus on single-group public goods, in which people have to choose between their private interests and the interests of their group. In many societal problems, people are involved in multilevel public goods problems, where multiple local groups are nested within a larger global group. We study experimentally how punishment affects cooperation and norms in multilevel public goods games. In our games, two local groups are nested within a larger global group. Participants have to choose between not contributing, contributing locally, and contributing globally. Local contributions would lead to a polarized outcome where two separate local public goods are provided, whereas global contributions would lead to a unified global good that benefits all. Moreover, we study whether cooperation and punishment patterns depend on the type of public good participants are initially exposed to: single-group or multilevel. Participants either begin in a single-group public goods game and then shift to a multilevel public goods game or vice versa. We find that punishment is less effective in multilevel public goods games than in single-group public goods games. In particular, punishment only promotes cooperation in multilevel public goods games if people have prior experience with solving single-group public goods games. Our results refine the boundary conditions for the effectiveness of punishment and suggest that ‘starting small’ by first solving single-group public goods problems is necessary for successful multilevel public good provision.
Study research question
What is the effect of punishment on subgroup and collective public good provision in multilevel public goods problems?.
Collection provenance
- Collected during project
Collection methods
- Experiment
Personal data
No
External Source
Source description
File formats
Data types
- Structured
Languages
Coverage start
Coverage end
Spatial coverage
The Netherlands
Collection period start
01/10/2021
Collection period end
31/10/2021
Variables
Unit
Unit description
Sample size
Sampling method
Individuals
—
220
—
Experimental Group
—
55
—
Hypothesis
Theory
people contribute less to the global good in groups that are heterogeneous after the membership change than in groups that are heterogeneous before the membership change.
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people make higher total contributions (combining contributions to the colour-specific public good and the global good) in the punishment condition than in the no-punishment condition.
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Variable type
Variable name
Variable description
Dependent variable
Contribution to subgroup
—
Dependent variable
Contribution to collective group
—
Independent variable
Presence of peer punishment possibilities
—
Independent variable
Whether a single-group PGG was played before the multilevel PGG or vice versa
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Discipline-specific operationalizations
Conflict of interest
No conflicts of interest
Data packages
Publications
Documents
Filename
Description
Date
Ethics
Ethical assessment
Yes
Ethical committee
the Faculty Ethical Review Board of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Utrecht University