Universität zu Köln

Gaechter, Simon ORCID: 0000-0002-7182-8505, Kölle, Felix ORCID: 0000-0003-4036-8566 and Quercia, Simone ORCID: 0000-0002-4307-5219 (2017). Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons. Nature Human Behaviour, 1 (9). 650 - 657. NEW YORK: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP. ISSN 2397-3374

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Abstract

Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good(1-4), or it needs costly generosity to create one(1,5). Status quo effects(6) predict that maintaining a public good is easier than providing a new one. Here, we show experimentally and with simulations that even under identical incentives, low levels of cooperation (the 'tragedy of the commons' 2) are systematically more likely in maintenance than provision. Across three series of experiments, we find that strong and weak positive reciprocity, known to be fundamental tendencies underpinning human cooperation(7-10), are substantially diminished under maintenance compared with provision. As we show in a fourth experiment, the opposite holds for negative reciprocity ('punishment'). Our findings suggest that incentives to avoid the 'tragedy of the commons' need to contend with dilemmaspecific reciprocity.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Gaechter, Simon UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-7182-8505 UNSPECIFIED Kölle, Felix koelle@wiso.uni-koeln.de orcid.org/0000-0003-4036-8566 UNSPECIFIED Quercia, Simone UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0002-4307-5219 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-221020
DOI:	10.1038/s41562-017-0191-5
Journal or Publication Title:	Nature Human Behaviour
Volume:	1
Number:	9
Page Range:	650 - 657
Date:	2017
Publisher:	NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
Place of Publication:	NEW YORK
ISSN:	2397-3374
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Weitere Institute, Arbeits- und Forschungsgruppen > Staatswissenschaftliches Seminar
Subjects:	Economics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language PUBLIC-GOODS EXPERIMENTS; SOCIAL DILEMMAS; CONDITIONAL COOPERATION; VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS; POOL RESOURCES; COLD-PRICKLE; WARM-GLOW; EVOLUTION; ALTRUISM; BEHAVIOR Multiple languages Psychology, Biological; Multidisciplinary Sciences; Neurosciences; Psychology, Experimental Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/22102