Wang Raymond Yu, Ng Cho Nam
Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
PLoS One. 2015 Apr 16;10(4):e0124513. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124513. eCollection 2015.
The problem of trust is a paradigmatic social dilemma. Previous literature has paid much academic attention on effects of peer punishment and altruistic third-party punishment on trust and human cooperation in dyadic interactions. However, the effects of centralized sanctioning institutions on decentralized reciprocity in hierarchical interactions remain to be further explored. This paper presents a formal two-level trust game with incomplete information which adds an authority as a strategic purposive actor into the traditional trust game. This model allows scholars to examine the problem of trust in more complex game theoretic configurations. The analysis demonstrates how the centralized institutions might change the dynamics of reciprocity between the trustor and the trustee. Findings suggest that the sequential equilibria of the newly proposed two-level model simultaneously include the risk of placing trust for the trustor and the temptation of short-term defection for the trustee. Moreover, they have shown that even a slight uncertainty about the type of the newly introduced authority might facilitate the establishment of trust and reciprocity in social dilemmas.
信任问题是一个典型的社会困境。以往文献在二元互动中，对同伴惩罚和利他第三方惩罚对信任及人类合作的影响给予了大量学术关注。然而，中央制裁机构对等级互动中分散互惠的影响仍有待进一步探索。本文提出了一个具有不完全信息的正式两级信任博弈，该博弈在传统信任博弈中增加了一个作为战略目标行为体的权威。这个模型使学者们能够在更复杂的博弈论框架中研究信任问题。分析表明了中央机构可能如何改变信任者与受托者之间的互惠动态。研究结果表明，新提出的两级模型的序列均衡同时包括信任者信任的风险和受托者短期背叛的诱惑。此外，研究表明，即使新引入的权威类型存在轻微不确定性，也可能促进社会困境中信任和互惠的建立。
