Abstract
This paper examines experimentally how reputational uncertainty and the rate of change of the social environment determine cooperation. Reputational uncertainty significantly decreases cooperation, while a fast-changing social environment only causes a second-order qualitative increase in cooperation. At the individual level, reputational uncertainty induces more leniency and forgiveness in imposing network punishment through the link proposal and removal processes, inhibiting the formation of cooperative clusters. However, this effect is significant only in the fast-changing environment and not in the slow-changing environment. A substitution pattern between network punishment and action punishment (retaliatory defection) explains this discrepancy across the two social environments.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 75-103 |
Journal | Games and Economic Behavior |
Volume | 134 |
Online published | 14 Apr 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jul 2022 |
Research Keywords
- Cooperation
- Experiments
- Prisoner's dilemma
- Uncertainty
- Repeated games
- Networks
Publisher's Copyright Statement
- COPYRIGHT TERMS OF DEPOSITED POSTPRINT FILE: © 2022. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/