IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bir/birmec/10-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Behavioural Consequences of Unfair Punishment

Author

Listed:
  • Michalis Drouvelis

Abstract

Experimental evidence from public good games with punishment suggests that punishment works when subjects assign it fairly by sanctioning non-cooperators. This paper reports an experiment in which punishment is assigned unfairly in the sense that it is not linked to individual behaviour and is melted out to all group members (irrespective of their prior behaviour). We test whether unfair punishment generates different contribution and punishment behaviour relative to the standard punishment game. Our findings suggest different dynamics of average contributions in the presence of unfair punishment relative to the standard punishment game. Contribution levels are significantly different only when subjects have obtained experience from both games. We also find that, although the assignment of punishment is unaffected after the experience of an environment with unfair punishment, a history of unfair punishment makes a difference regarding reactions to alleviation, reward and punishment received.

Suggested Citation

  • Michalis Drouvelis, 2010. "The Behavioural Consequences of Unfair Punishment," Discussion Papers 10-34, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    • Handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:10-34
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.cal.bham.ac.uk/pdf/10-34.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laurent Denant-Boemont & David Masclet & Charles Noussair, 2007. "Punishment, counterpunishment and sanction enforcement in a social dilemma experiment," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 145-167, October.
    2. Gächter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt, 2011. "The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 193-210, February.
    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. 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.
    2. Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "Promoting Cooperation: the Distribution of Reward and Punishment Power," Discussion Papers 2012-08, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.

    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. Christian Thöni, 2014. "Inequality aversion and antisocial punishment," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 529-545, April.
    2. Drouvelis, Michalis & Malaeb, Bilal & Vlassopoulos, Michael & Wahba, Jackline, 2021. "Cooperation in a fragmented society: Experimental evidence on Syrian refugees and natives in Lebanon," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 176-191.
    3. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2015. "Norm enforcement in social dilemmas: An experiment with police commissioners," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 74-85.
    4. Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "Promoting Cooperation: the Distribution of Reward and Punishment Power," Discussion Papers 2012-08, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    5. Karakostas, Alexandros & Kocher, Martin G. & Matzat, Dominik & Rau, Holger A. & Riewe, Gerhard, 2023. "The team allocator game: Allocation power in public goods games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 73-87.
    6. Patel, Amrish & Cartwright, Edward & Mark, Van Vugt, 2010. "Punishment Cannot Sustain Cooperation in a Public Good Game with Free-Rider Anonymity," Working Papers in Economics 451, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    7. Angelo Antoci & Luca Zarri, 2015. "Punish and perish?," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(2), pages 195-223, May.
    8. Erte Xiao & Howard Kunreuther, 2016. "Punishment and Cooperation in Stochastic Social Dilemmas," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 60(4), pages 670-693, June.
    9. Laura K. Gee & Xinxin Lyu & Heather Urry, 2017. "Anger Management: Aggression and Punishment in the Provision of Public Goods," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-28, January.
    10. Reuben, Ernesto & Riedl, Arno, 2013. "Enforcement of contribution norms in public good games with heterogeneous populations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 122-137.
    11. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    12. Grieco, Daniela & Faillo, Marco & Zarri, Luca, 2017. "Enforcing cooperation in public goods games: Is one punisher enough?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 55-73.
    13. Benjamin Beranek & Alper Duman, 2010. "Economic Cooperation In Turkish Culture: Public Goods Games And Lonely Elephants," Working Papers 1004, Izmir University of Economics.
    14. Faillo, Marco & Grieco, Daniela & Zarri, Luca, 2013. "Legitimate punishment, feedback, and the enforcement of cooperation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 271-283.
    15. Michalis Drouvelis, 2015. "Alleviation and Sanctions in Social Dilemma Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-13, September.
    16. Qian, Jun & Zhang, Tongda & Zhang, Yingfeng & Chai, Yueting & Sun, Xiao & Wang, Zhen, 2023. "The construction of peer punishment preference: how central power shapes prosocial and antisocial punishment behaviors," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 442(C).
    17. Daniela Grieco & Marco Faillo & Luca Zarri, 2013. "Top Contributors as Punishers," Working Papers 24/2013, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    18. Cornée, Simon & Masclet, David, 2022. "Long-term relationships, group lending, and peer monitoring in microfinance: Experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    19. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    20. Safarzynska, Karolina, 2020. "Collective punishment promotes resource conservation if it is not enforced," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Recriprocity; Unfair punishment; Public good experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bir:birmec:10-34. 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: Oleksandr Talavera (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debhauk.html .

    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.