Can violence harm cooperation? Experimental evidence

Event Date: 23 March 2016

Speaker: Petros Sekeris, University of Portsmouth

Location: Strathclyde Business School, Cathedral Wing,Room 404b

Time: 4.15 pm

Abstract:

While folk theorems for dynamic renewable common pool resource games sustain cooperation at equilibrium, the possibility of appropriating violently the resource can destroy the incentives to cooperate, because of the expectation of conflict when resources are sufficiently depleted. This paper provides experimental evidence that individuals behave according to the theoretical predictions. For high stocks of resources, when conflict is a costly activity, participants cooperate less than in the control group, and play non-cooperatively with higher frequency. This comes as a consequence of the anticipation that, when resources run low, the conflict option is used by a large share of participants.

Published: 23 March 2016