Pledges of commitment and cooperation in partnerships

DOI10.3390/G7010004MaRDI QIDQ1651845zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Lachlan Deer, Ralph-Christopher Bayer

Publication date 10 July 2018

Published in Games (Search for Journal in Brave)

Copyright license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.3390/g7010004

zbMATH Keywords

commitmentcooperationendogenous group formationexperiment

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Cooperative games (91A12) Experimental studies (91A90)

Review text

Summary: We use experimental methods to investigate whether pledges of commitment can improve cooperation in endogenously-formed partnerships facing a social dilemma. Treatments vary in terms of the individual's: (1) opportunity to commit to their partner; (2) the cost of dissolving committed partnerships; and (3) the distribution of these dissolution costs between partners. Our findings show that pledges of commitment alone can increase cooperation and welfare in committed partnerships. The introduction of relatively large and equally split costs yields similar gains. In contrast, when costs to dissolve committed partnerships fall solely on the individual choosing to break up, pledges of commitment fail to improve cooperation and welfare.

Recommendations

• Binding promises and cooperation among strangers
• Pledge-and-review in the laboratory
• Evolutionarily stable co-operative commitments
• Words versus actions as a means to influence cooperation in social dilemma situations
• Partnership with partial commitment: A game theoretic approach

Cites work

• A comparative statics analysis of punishment in public-good experiments
• Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment
• College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage

Cited in

(3)

• Binding promises and cooperation among strangers
• Pledge-and-review in the laboratory
• Words versus actions as a means to influence cooperation in social dilemma situations

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• Z-Tree
• ORSEE

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