TY - JOUR
T1 - Group size effect and over-punishment in the case of third party enforcement of social norms
AU - Kamei, Kenju
N1 - Funding Information:
I thank John Hey for his hospitality to let me conduct the experiment at the University of York. I also thank Mark Wilson for his support in setting the z-Tree software and managing the computer during the experiment. This project was funded by a grant by the Murata Science Foundation . Durham University Business School provided additional funding. I thank the editor, Daniel Houser, an associate editor and anonymous referee for valuable comments.
Funding Information:
I thank John Hey for his hospitality to let me conduct the experiment at the University of York. I also thank Mark Wilson for his support in setting the z-Tree software and managing the computer during the experiment. This project was funded by a grant by the Murata Science Foundation. Durham University Business School provided additional funding. I thank the editor, Daniel Houser, an associate editor and anonymous referee for valuable comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/7
Y1 - 2020/7
N2 - One of the important topics in public choice is how people's free-riding behavior could differ by group size in collective action dilemmas. This paper experimentally studies how the strength of third party punishment in a prisoner's dilemma could differ by the number of third parties in a group. Our data indicate that as the number of third party punishers increases in a group, the average punishment intensity per third party punisher decreases. However, the decrease rate is very mild and therefore the size of total punishment in a group substantially increases with an increase in group size. As a result, third party punishment becomes a sufficient deterrent against a player selecting defection in the prisoner's dilemma when the number of third party punishers is sufficiently large. Nevertheless, when there are too many third party punishers in a group, a defector's expected payoff is far lower than that of a cooperator due to strong aggregate punishment, while some cooperators are even hurt through punishment. Therefore, the group incurs a huge efficiency loss. Such over-punishment results from third party punishers’ conditional punishment behaviors: their punishment intensity is positively correlated with their beliefs on the peers’ punitive actions. Some possible ways to coordinate punishment among peers even when group size is very large, thus enabling the efficiency loss to be mitigated, are also discussed in the paper.
AB - One of the important topics in public choice is how people's free-riding behavior could differ by group size in collective action dilemmas. This paper experimentally studies how the strength of third party punishment in a prisoner's dilemma could differ by the number of third parties in a group. Our data indicate that as the number of third party punishers increases in a group, the average punishment intensity per third party punisher decreases. However, the decrease rate is very mild and therefore the size of total punishment in a group substantially increases with an increase in group size. As a result, third party punishment becomes a sufficient deterrent against a player selecting defection in the prisoner's dilemma when the number of third party punishers is sufficiently large. Nevertheless, when there are too many third party punishers in a group, a defector's expected payoff is far lower than that of a cooperator due to strong aggregate punishment, while some cooperators are even hurt through punishment. Therefore, the group incurs a huge efficiency loss. Such over-punishment results from third party punishers’ conditional punishment behaviors: their punishment intensity is positively correlated with their beliefs on the peers’ punitive actions. Some possible ways to coordinate punishment among peers even when group size is very large, thus enabling the efficiency loss to be mitigated, are also discussed in the paper.
KW - Cooperation
KW - Dilemma
KW - Experiment
KW - Group size effect
KW - Third party punishment
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.04.002
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.04.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85046681113
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 175
SP - 395
EP - 412
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
ER -