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The Vote with the Wallet Game: Responsible Consumerism as a Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma

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  • Leonardo Becchetti

    (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, 00133 Roma RM, Italy)

  • Francesco Salustri

    (Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK)

Abstract

Socially responsible consumers and investors are increasingly using their consumption and saving choices as a ‘vote with the wallet’ to award companies that are at vanguard in reconciling the creation of economic value with social and environmental sustainability. In our paper, we model the vote with the wallet as a multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma, outline equilibria and possible solutions to the related coordination failure problem in evolutionary games, apply our analysis to domains in which the vote with the wallet is empirically more relevant, and provide policy suggestions.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonardo Becchetti & Francesco Salustri, 2019. "The Vote with the Wallet Game: Responsible Consumerism as a Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-22, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:4:p:1109-:d:207619
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    3. Becchetti, Leonardo & Conzo, Gianluigi & Salustri, Francesco, 2023. "What about the others? Conditional cooperation, climate change perception and ecological actions," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1231, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    4. Andrés Nova-Reyes & Francisco Muñoz-Leiva & Teodoro Luque-Martínez, 2020. "The Tipping Point in the Status of Socially Responsible Consumer Behavior Research? A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-23, April.
    5. Becchetti, Leonardo & Salustri, Francesco & Scaramozzino, Pasquale, 2020. "Nudging and corporate environmental responsibility: A natural field experiment," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    6. Leonardo Becchetti, 2023. "Ecological transition:a game theoretic and statistical challenge," RIEDS - Rivista Italiana di Economia, Demografia e Statistica - The Italian Journal of Economic, Demographic and Statistical Studies, SIEDS Societa' Italiana di Economia Demografia e Statistica, vol. 77(4), pages 4-12, October-D.
    7. Vittorio Pelligra & Alejandra Vásquez, 2020. "Empathy and socially responsible consumption: an experiment with the vote-with-the-wallet game," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 89(4), pages 383-422, November.

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