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Trust with Private and Common Property: Effects of Stronger Property Right Entitlements

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  • James C. Cox

    (Georgia State University, Experimental Economics Center and Department of Economics, 14 Marietta Street, P.O. Box 3992, Atlanta, GA 30302, USA)

  • Daniel T. Hall

    (High Point University, Phillips School of Business, Drawer 40, 833 Montlieu Avenue, High Point, NC 27262, USA)

Abstract

Is mutually beneficial cooperation in trust games more prevalent with private property or common property? Does the strength of property right entitlement affect the answer? Cox, Ostrom, Walker, et al. [1] report little difference between cooperation in private and common property trust games. We assign stronger property right entitlements by requiring subjects to meet a performance quota in a real effort task to earn their endowments. We report experiment treatments with sequential choice and strategy responses. We find that cooperation is lower in common property trust games than in private property trust games, which is an idiosyncratic prediction of revealed altruism theory [2]. Demonstrable differences and similarities between our strategy response and sequential choice data provide insight into the how these protocols can yield different results from hypothesis tests even when they are eliciting the same behavioral patterns across treatments.

Suggested Citation

  • James C. Cox & Daniel T. Hall, 2010. "Trust with Private and Common Property: Effects of Stronger Property Right Entitlements," Games, MDPI, vol. 1(4), pages 1-24, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:1:y:2010:i:4:p:527-550:d:10172
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Benito-Ostolaza, J.M. & Ezcurra, R. & Osés-Eraso, N., 2014. "Negative externalities in cropping decisions: Private versus common land," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 185-192.
    2. James C. Cox, 2012. "Private Goods, Public Goods, and Common Pools with Homo Reciprocans," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(1), pages 1-14, July.
    3. Jordi Brandts & Gary Charness, 2011. "The strategy versus the direct-response method: a first survey of experimental comparisons," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(3), pages 375-398, September.
    4. James C. Cox & Maroš Servátka & Radovan Vadovič, 2017. "Status quo effects in fairness games: reciprocal responses to acts of commission versus acts of omission," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 1-18, March.
    5. Danková, Katarína & Servátka, Maroš, 2015. "The house money effect and negative reciprocity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 60-71.
    6. Kaiming Zheng & Xiaoyuan Wang & Debing Ni & Yang Yang, 2020. "Reciprocity and Veto Power in Relation-Specific Investments: An Experimental Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-19, May.
    7. James C. Cox & Elinor Ostrom & James M. Walker, 2011. "Bosses and Kings: Asymmetric Power in Paired Common Pool and Public Good Games," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2011-06, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, revised Aug 2012.
    8. Czap, Hans J. & Czap, Natalia V. & Burbach, Mark E. & Lynne, Gary D., 2018. "Does Might Make Right? An Experiment on Assigning Property Rights," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 229-240.
    9. Eric A Coleman, 2016. "Common property in the trust game: Experimental evidence from Bulgaria," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(1), pages 27-43, January.
    10. James C. Cox & Maroš Servátka & Radovan Vadovic, 2012. "Status Quo Effects in Fairness Games: Reciprocal Responses to Acts of Commission vs. Acts of Omission," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2012-03, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, revised Mar 2016.
    11. De Geest, Lawrence R. & Kidwai, Abdul H. & Portillo, Javier E., 2022. "Ours, not yours: Property rights, poaching and deterrence in common-pool resources," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    12. Chen, Daniel L. & Schonger, Martin, 2016. "A Theory of Experiments: Invariance of Equilibrium to the Strategy Method of Elicitation and Implications for Social Preferences," IAST Working Papers 16-54, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), revised Feb 2020.
    13. James C. Cox & Maroš Servátka & Radovan Vadovič, 2012. "Status Quo Effects in Fairness Games: Acts of Commission vs. Acts of Omission," Working Papers in Economics 12/01, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    trust game; private property; common property; real effort; revealed altruism theory; strategy method; sequential choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games

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