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Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation

Intergenerational common-pool resource games represent a new experimental paradigm in which the current generation's decision to cooperate or defect influences future generations who cannot reciprocate, providing key insights for sustainability science. We combine experimental and theoretical a...

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Autores principales: Chang, Chia-chen, Kristensen, Nadiah P., Le Nghiem, Thi Phuong, Tan, Claudia L. Y., Carrasco, L. Roman
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295521
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210206
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author Chang, Chia-chen
Kristensen, Nadiah P.
Le Nghiem, Thi Phuong
Tan, Claudia L. Y.
Carrasco, L. Roman
author_facet Chang, Chia-chen
Kristensen, Nadiah P.
Le Nghiem, Thi Phuong
Tan, Claudia L. Y.
Carrasco, L. Roman
author_sort Chang, Chia-chen
collection PubMed
description Intergenerational common-pool resource games represent a new experimental paradigm in which the current generation's decision to cooperate or defect influences future generations who cannot reciprocate, providing key insights for sustainability science. We combine experimental and theoretical approaches to assess the roles of having a stake in the future (50% chance to pass the resource on to themselves in the next generation) and reminders of the presence of others (exposure to people-chatting sounds) on intergenerational cooperation. We find that, as expected, having a stake in the future increases cooperation with future generations, except when participants are also exposed to people-chatting sounds. We hypothesize that this interaction effect occurs because people-chatting sounds trigger a perception of large group size, which reduces the chance of individuals and their descendants benefiting from the pool in the future, thus reducing cooperation. Our results highlight the context-dependent effect of having a future stake on intergenerational cooperation for resource sustainability, and suggest an area of future work for environmental messaging.
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spelling pubmed-82780642021-07-21 Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation Chang, Chia-chen Kristensen, Nadiah P. Le Nghiem, Thi Phuong Tan, Claudia L. Y. Carrasco, L. Roman R Soc Open Sci Ecology, Conservation and Global Change Biology Intergenerational common-pool resource games represent a new experimental paradigm in which the current generation's decision to cooperate or defect influences future generations who cannot reciprocate, providing key insights for sustainability science. We combine experimental and theoretical approaches to assess the roles of having a stake in the future (50% chance to pass the resource on to themselves in the next generation) and reminders of the presence of others (exposure to people-chatting sounds) on intergenerational cooperation. We find that, as expected, having a stake in the future increases cooperation with future generations, except when participants are also exposed to people-chatting sounds. We hypothesize that this interaction effect occurs because people-chatting sounds trigger a perception of large group size, which reduces the chance of individuals and their descendants benefiting from the pool in the future, thus reducing cooperation. Our results highlight the context-dependent effect of having a future stake on intergenerational cooperation for resource sustainability, and suggest an area of future work for environmental messaging. The Royal Society 2021-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8278064/ /pubmed/34295521 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210206 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology, Conservation and Global Change Biology
Chang, Chia-chen
Kristensen, Nadiah P.
Le Nghiem, Thi Phuong
Tan, Claudia L. Y.
Carrasco, L. Roman
Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
title Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
title_full Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
title_fullStr Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
title_full_unstemmed Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
title_short Having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
title_sort having a stake in the future and perceived population density influence intergenerational cooperation
topic Ecology, Conservation and Global Change Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295521
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210206
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