Center for Empirical Research in Economics and Behavioral Sciences, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany.
PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e56152. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056152. Epub 2013 Feb 6.
Identifying methods to increase cooperation and efficiency in public goods provision is of vital interest for human societies. The methods that have been proposed often incur costs that (more than) destroy the efficiency gains through increased cooperation. It has for example been shown that inter-group conflict increases intra-group cooperation, however at the cost of collective efficiency. We propose a new method that makes use of the positive effects associated with inter-group competition but avoids the detrimental (cost) effects of a structural conflict. We show that the mere comparison to another structurally independent group increases both the level of intra-group cooperation and overall efficiency. The advantage of this new method is that it directly transfers the benefits from increased cooperation into increased efficiency. In repeated public goods provision we experimentally manipulated the participants' level of contribution feedback (intra-group only vs. both intra- and inter-group) as well as the provision environment (smaller groups with higher individual benefits from cooperation vs. larger groups with lower individual benefits from cooperation). Irrespective of the provision environment groups with an inter-group comparison opportunity exhibited a significantly stronger cooperation than groups without this opportunity. Participants conditionally cooperated within their group and additionally acted to advance their group to not fall behind the other group. The individual efforts to advance the own group cushion the downward trend in the above average contributors and thus render contributions on a higher level. We discuss areas of practical application.
确定增加公共物品提供中的合作和效率的方法对人类社会具有至关重要的意义。所提出的方法往往会产生成本，这些成本（超过）破坏了通过增加合作获得的效率收益。例如，已经表明，群体间冲突会增加群体内的合作，但这是以集体效率为代价的。我们提出了一种新的方法，利用与群体间竞争相关的积极影响，但避免了结构冲突的不利（成本）影响。我们表明，仅仅与另一个结构独立的群体进行比较，就会同时提高群体内的合作水平和整体效率。这种新方法的优势在于，它直接将合作增加带来的收益转化为效率的提高。在重复的公共物品提供实验中，我们操纵了参与者的贡献反馈水平（仅群体内 vs. 群体内和群体间）以及提供环境（合作个体收益较高的小组 vs. 合作个体收益较低的大组）。无论提供环境如何，具有群体间比较机会的群体表现出的合作强度明显高于没有这种机会的群体。参与者有条件地在其所在群体中合作，并且还采取行动以促进其群体不落后于另一群体。促进自身群体的个人努力缓解了高于平均水平的贡献者的下降趋势，从而使贡献水平提高。我们讨论了实际应用领域。
