IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ratsoc/v7y1995i3p328-337.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Experiments with Social Traps III

Author

Listed:
  • ANATOL RAPOPORT

    (University of Toronto)

  • ANDREAS DIEKMANN

    (University of Bern)

  • AXEL FRANZEN

    (University of Bern)

Abstract

A coalition is usually assumed to involve an agreement, explicit or implicit, among several actors (individuals or organizations) to cooperate in pursuit of a common interest. Typically members of a coalition regard such cooperation in their own individual interest only if others continue to cooperate. Thus violation of the agreement holding the coalition together by some members often instigates others to defect, and the process becomes self-reinforcing. The effect is demonstrated in an experiment with a Tragedy of the Commons type game, in which one of the players, a confederate of the experimenter, (the “stooge†) grossly violates apparent expectations of the others. Measures of the amount of cooperation (or noncooperation) before and after the stooge's intervention are related to the presence or absence of preliminary discussion and to the number of players.

Suggested Citation

  • Anatol Rapoport & Andreas Diekmann & Axel Franzen, 1995. "Experiments with Social Traps III," Rationality and Society, , vol. 7(3), pages 328-337, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:7:y:1995:i:3:p:328-337
    DOI: 10.1177/1043463195007003006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463195007003006
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1043463195007003006?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. R. Mark Isaac & James M. Walker, 1988. "Group Size Effects in Public Goods Provision: The Voluntary Contributions Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(1), pages 179-199.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rense Corten & Stephanie Rosenkranz & Vincent Buskens & Karen S Cook, 2016. "Reputation Effects in Social Networks Do Not Promote Cooperation: An Experimental Test of the Raub & Weesie Model," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(7), pages 1-17, July.
    2. András Németh & Károly Takács, 2007. "The Evolution of Altruism in Spatially Structured Populations," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 10(3), pages 1-4.
    3. Sze‐Sze Wong & Wai Fong Boh & Anne Wu, 2021. "When Three’s (Good) Company: Third‐Party Friendships on Cooperation across Departments," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(2), pages 389-420, March.
    4. Ronald S. Burt, 1999. "Private Games are too Dangerous," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 311-341, December.

    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. Kyung Hwan Baik & Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Abhijit Ramalingam, 2021. "Group size and matching protocol in contests," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 1716-1736, November.
    2. Karl-Martin Ehrhart & Claudia Keser, 1999. "Mobility and Cooperation: On the Run," CIRANO Working Papers 99s-24, CIRANO.
    3. Ambrus, Attila & Pathak, Parag A., 2011. "Cooperation over finite horizons: A theory and experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 500-512.
    4. Fangfang Tan, 2008. "Punishment in a Linear Public Good Game with Productivity Heterogeneity," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 269-293, September.
    5. Ye-Feng Chen & Shu-Guang Jiang & Marie Claire Villeval, 2015. "The Tragedy of Corruption. Corruption as a social dilemma," Working Papers 1531, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    6. Noussair, Charles & Soo, Cindy, 2008. "Voluntary contributions to a dynamic public good: Experimental evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 71-77, January.
    7. Brunner, Eric & Sonstelie, Jon, 2003. "School finance reform and voluntary fiscal federalism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2157-2185, September.
    8. Deck, Cary & Murphy, James J., 2019. "Donors change both their level and pattern of giving in response to contests among charities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 91-106.
    9. Christophe Lemiére & Gaute Torsvik & Ottar Mæstad & Christopher H. Herbst & Kenneth L. Leonard, 2013. "Evaluating the Impact of Results-Based Financing on Health Worker Performance: Theory, Tools and Variables to Inform an Impact Evaluation," Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Discussion Paper Series 98269, The World Bank.
    10. John Duffy & Jonathan Lafky, 2014. "Birth, Death and Public Good Provision," Working Paper 520, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jan 2014.
    11. Arbel, Yuval & Bar-El, Ronen & Schwarz, Mordechai E. & Tobol, Yossef, 2019. "To What Do People Contribute? Ongoing Operations vs. Sustainable Supplies," IZA Discussion Papers 12180, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Fabio Fiorillo & Agnese Sacchi, 2012. "The Political Economy of the Standard Level of Services: The Role of Income Distribution," CESifo Working Paper Series 3696, CESifo.
    13. Andrej Angelovski & Arianna Galliera & Werner Güth, 2019. "Partial Versus General Compulsory Solidarity: an Experimental Analysis," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 249-279, December.
    14. David Masclet & Charles N. Noussair & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2013. "Threat And Punishment In Public Good Experiments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 1421-1441, April.
    15. Philip Solimine & Luke Boosey, 2021. "Strategic formation of collaborative networks," Papers 2109.14204, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    16. Di Liddo, Giuseppe & Morone, Andrea, 2017. "Yardstick competition and fiscal disparities: An experimental study," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 134-137.
    17. Michalis Drouvelis & Julian C. Jamison, 2015. "Selecting public goods institutions: Who likes to punish and reward?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(2), pages 501-534, October.
    18. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2007. "On Modeling Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Public Finance Review, , vol. 35(2), pages 311-332, March.
    19. Glogowsky, Ulrich & Cagala, Tobias & Rincke, Johannes & Grimm, Veronika, 2014. "Cooperation and Trustworthiness in Repeated Interaction," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100437, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Carpenter, Jeffrey P., 2007. "Punishing free-riders: How group size affects mutual monitoring and the provision of public goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 31-51, July.

    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:ratsoc:v:7:y:1995:i:3:p:328-337. 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: .

    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.