Impulsivity, Voluntary Cooperation, and Denunciation among Fishermen

Abundant laboratory evidence shows that many people incur costs to punish free-riders. In this paper, we investigate punishment in the context of fishermen who decide whether to denounce other fishermen who catch illegally small fish. Our laboratory and survey evidence suggests that the level of impulsivity plays an important role for costly punishment. Fishermen who behave more impulsive during a laboratory inter-temporal choice task report to have a higher propensity to denounce misbehavior from other fishermen. This finding suggests that impulsivity may help to explain why many people incur costs to punish free-riders. Moreover, we find that fishermen, who contribute more in a laboratory public goods experiment, report to be more likely to denounce free-riding in the field, suggesting that voluntary cooperativeness is also important to account for denunciation in the field.