Counter-punishment, norm-communication and accountability

Autor: Andrighetto, Giulia, Brandts, Jordi, Conte, Rosaria, Sabater-Mir, Jordi, Solaz, Héctor, Villatoro, Daniel
Přispěvatelé: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), Generalitat de Catalunya, European Commission
Rok vydání: 2014
Zdroj: Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
instname
Popis: Presentado como comunicación en HEIDI-CORTEX Behavioral Economics Workshop GATE, celebrado los días 29 y 30 de octubre de 2014 en Ecully (France). Presentado como comunicación el 17 de abril de 2015 en el Second International Meeting on Experimental and Behavioral Social Sciences, celebrado del 15 al 17 de abril de 2015 en Toulouse (Francia)
We study whether communication can limit the negative consequences of the use of counterpunishment in a public goods environment. The two dimensions of communication we study are norm communication and accountability, having to justify one’s actions to others. We conduct four experimental treatments, all involving a contribution stage, a punishment stage and a counterpunishment stage. In the first stage there are no communication possibilities. The second treatment allows for communication at the punishment stage and the third asks for a justification message at the counter-punishment stage. The fourth combines the two communication channels of the second and third treatments. We find that the three treatments involving communication at any of the two relevant stages lead to significantly higher contributions than the baseline treatment. The detrimental effect of allowing for counter-punishment is neutralized in the presence of communication possibilities. We find no difference between the three treatments with communication. Separately norm communication and being held accountable work equally well and we find no interaction effect from using them jointly. We also relate our results to those of other treatments without counter-punishment opportunities. The overall pattern of results shows that the key factor is the presence of communication. Whenever it is possible contributions are higher than when it is not, regardless of counter-punishment opportunities
The work presented in this paper has been performed in the frame of the MacNorms project (Intramurales de frontera CSIC – PIF08-007) and of the Gloders project (Seventh Framework EU Programme FP7/2007-2013 Grant: 315874). The authors thank the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR, Rome), the European University Institute, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Grant: ECO2011-29847-C02-01) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Grant: 2009 SGR 820 and Grant 2009SGR1434) for research support
Databáze: OpenAIRE