IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v28y1984i1p123-148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives

Author

Listed:
  • Pamela Oliver

    (Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin)

Abstract

Apex games place weak players in the formal equivalent of a multiperson prisoner's dilemma in which each weak player must choose between competing against the other weak players for the opportunity to coalesce with the strong player or cooperating with the other weak players to produce a jointly preferable outcome. Punishments, not rewards, are predicted to be effective for enforcing cooperation by the weak players. Fifty-four groups of four subjects each played the weak role in a five-person apex game with a confederate playing the apex (strong) role in a 3×3 design with factors of low, medium, and high levels of rewards and punishments available as incentives. As predicted, punishments but not rewards had a significant impact on increasing cooperation. Despite this effect, many groups experienced harmful effects of punishment availability that increased the risk of retaliatory spirals. It is concluded that a second-order dilemma may be seen in prisoner's dilemmas, since punishments are both necessary for enforcing cooperation and detrimental to that cooperation.

Suggested Citation

  • Pamela Oliver, 1984. "Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 28(1), pages 123-148, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:28:y:1984:i:1:p:123-148
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002784028001007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002784028001007
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002784028001007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chamberlin, John, 1974. "Provision of Collective Goods As a Function of Group Size," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(2), pages 707-716, June.
    2. V. Edwin Bixenstine & Clifford A. Levitt & Kellogg V. Wilson, 1966. "Collaboration among six persons in a Prisoner's Dilemma game," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 10(4), pages 488-496, December.
    3. Reinhard Selten & Klaus G. Schuster, 1968. "Psychological Variables and Coalition-Forming Behaviour," International Economic Association Series, in: Karl Borch & Jan Mossin (ed.), Risk and Uncertainty, chapter 0, pages 221-246, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Norman Schofield, 1975. "A Game Theoretic Analysis of Olson's Game of Collective Action," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 19(3), pages 441-461, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pamela Oliver, 1980. "Selective Incentives in an Apex Game," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 24(1), pages 113-141, March.
    2. John Fox & Melvin Guyer, 1977. "Group Size and Others' Strategy in an N-Person Game," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 21(2), pages 323-338, June.
    3. Burnett, Kimberly M., 2006. "Introductions of Invasive Species: Failure of the Weaker Link," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(1), pages 21-28, April.
    4. Newton, Jonathan & Angus, Simon D., 2015. "Coalitions, tipping points and the speed of evolution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 172-187.
    5. Wang, Chengsi & Zudenkova, Galina, 2016. "Non-monotonic group-size effect in repeated provision of public goods," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 116-128.
    6. Halonen-Akatwijuka Maija, 2007. "Coordination Failure in Foreign Aid," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-40, August.
    7. Colombo, Luca & Labrecciosa, Paola & Van Long, Ngo, 2022. "A dynamic analysis of international environmental agreements under partial cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    8. Bruno Deffains & Jean Mercier Ythier, 2009. "Optimal production of transplant care services," Working Papers of BETA 2009-19, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    9. Dijkstra, Bouwe R., 2007. "An investment contest to influence environmental policy," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 300-324, November.
    10. Elinor Ostrom, 2010. "Analyzing collective action," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(s1), pages 155-166, November.
    11. Haag, Matthew & Lagunoff, Roger, 2007. "On the size and structure of group cooperation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 68-89, July.
    12. Rajit Biswas, 2015. "Tariffs that may fail to protect: A model of trade and public goods," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(1), pages 361-370.
    13. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    14. Joe Oppenheimer, 1985. "Public choice and three ethical properties of politics," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 241-255, January.
    15. Tamai, Toshiki, 2018. "Dynamic provision of public goods under uncertainty," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 409-415.
    16. Todd Sandler, 2017. "Environmental cooperation: contrasting international environmental agreements," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(2), pages 345-364.
    17. Pickhardt Michael, 2012. "Pareto meets Olson – A Note on Pareto-optimality and Group Size in Linear Public Goods Games," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 63(1), pages 195-202, January.
    18. Ingmar Schumacher, 2019. "Climate Policy Must Favour Mitigation Over Adaptation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(4), pages 1519-1531, December.
    19. Sung Ha Hwang, 2009. "Larger groups may alleviate collective action problems," UMASS Amherst Economics Working Papers 2009-05, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics.
    20. Francis Bloch, 2009. "Endogenous formation of alliances in conflicts," Working Papers hal-00435387, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:28:y:1984:i:1:p:123-148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.