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Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally

In this paper, we test whether sanctions applied to an entire group on account of the free-riding of one of its members can promote group cooperation. To measure the efficiency of such collective sanctions, we conducted a lab experiment based on a standard public good game. The results show that, ov...

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Autor principal: Chapkovski, Philipp
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8031421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33831026
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248599
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author Chapkovski, Philipp
author_facet Chapkovski, Philipp
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description In this paper, we test whether sanctions applied to an entire group on account of the free-riding of one of its members can promote group cooperation. To measure the efficiency of such collective sanctions, we conducted a lab experiment based on a standard public good game. The results show that, overall, collective sanctions are ineffective. Moreover, when subjects are able to punish their peers, the level of cooperation is lower in the regime of collective sanctions than under individual sanctions. Both outcomes can be explained by a general disapproval of the collective responsibility for an individual fault: in the post-experimental survey, an absolute majority evaluated such regimes as unfair. While collective sanctions are not an effective means for boosting group compliance, there are nevertheless two insights to be gained here. First, there are differences across genders: under collective sanctions, men’s level of compliance is significantly higher than under individual sanctions, while the opposite is true for women. Second, there were intriguing differences in outcomes between the different regime types. Under collective sanctions, a person who is caught tends to comply in the future, at least in the short term. By contrast, under individual sanctions, an individual wrongdoer decreases his or her level of compliance in the next period.
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spelling pubmed-80314212021-04-14 Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally Chapkovski, Philipp PLoS One Research Article In this paper, we test whether sanctions applied to an entire group on account of the free-riding of one of its members can promote group cooperation. To measure the efficiency of such collective sanctions, we conducted a lab experiment based on a standard public good game. The results show that, overall, collective sanctions are ineffective. Moreover, when subjects are able to punish their peers, the level of cooperation is lower in the regime of collective sanctions than under individual sanctions. Both outcomes can be explained by a general disapproval of the collective responsibility for an individual fault: in the post-experimental survey, an absolute majority evaluated such regimes as unfair. While collective sanctions are not an effective means for boosting group compliance, there are nevertheless two insights to be gained here. First, there are differences across genders: under collective sanctions, men’s level of compliance is significantly higher than under individual sanctions, while the opposite is true for women. Second, there were intriguing differences in outcomes between the different regime types. Under collective sanctions, a person who is caught tends to comply in the future, at least in the short term. By contrast, under individual sanctions, an individual wrongdoer decreases his or her level of compliance in the next period. Public Library of Science 2021-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8031421/ /pubmed/33831026 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248599 Text en © 2021 Philipp Chapkovski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Chapkovski, Philipp
Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
title Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
title_full Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
title_fullStr Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
title_full_unstemmed Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
title_short Strike one hundred to educate one: Measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
title_sort strike one hundred to educate one: measuring the efficacy of collective sanctions experimentally
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8031421/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33831026
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248599
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