Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2013;3:1735. doi: 10.1038/srep01735.
Cooperation in a large society of self-interested individuals is notoriously difficult to achieve when the externality of one individual's action is spread thin and wide on the whole society. This leads to the 'tragedy of the commons' in which rational action will ultimately make everyone worse-off. Traditional policies to promote cooperation involve Pigouvian taxation or subsidies that make individuals internalize the externality they incur. We introduce a new approach to achieving global cooperation by localizing externalities to one's peers in a social network, thus leveraging the power of peer-pressure to regulate behavior. The mechanism relies on a joint model of externalities and peer-pressure. Surprisingly, this mechanism can require a lower budget to operate than the Pigouvian mechanism, even when accounting for the social cost of peer pressure. Even when the available budget is very low, the social mechanisms achieve greater improvement in the outcome.
在一个由自利个体组成的大型社会中，当一个个体的行动的外部性广泛而分散地影响整个社会时，合作是非常困难的。这导致了“公地悲剧”，即理性行为最终会使每个人的处境变得更糟。传统的促进合作的政策涉及庇古税或补贴，以使个人将其产生的外部性内在化。我们引入了一种新的方法，通过将外部性本地化到社交网络中的同伴，从而利用同伴压力的力量来规范行为，来实现全球合作。该机制依赖于外部性和同伴压力的联合模型。令人惊讶的是，即使考虑到同伴压力的社会成本，这种机制的运作成本也可能低于庇古机制。即使可用的预算非常低，社会机制也能在结果上实现更大的改善。
