Rise of the Irrational Free Riding Behavior Under a Centralized Punishment Authority

抄録

This study compares the effects of the amount of feedback information in a public goods game with a centralized punishment institution where each player is required to contribute a certain amount, and those who under-contributes must pay a fixed fine. We compare two different amount of feedback information—one where only the aggregate level of contribution and own payoff is provided, and the other where the individual contributions and profits of the other players are also provided—under two different strength of penalty—one where it is barely deterrent to make players contribute as required (weakly enforceable punishment), and another with stronger penalty (strongly enforceable punishment)—in two by two design. Although it is a dominant strategy to contribute as required in both punishment institutions, we find a significant decline in the contribution in the weakly enforceable punishment institution when the feedback is provided at the individual level. In the other three treatments, the average contribution is stable across the periods. These results are consistent with the theoretical analysis using the finite population evolutionary stable strategy.