Self-Organization for Collective Action: An Experimental Study of Voting on Sanction Regimes

Entrusting the power to punish to a central authority is a hallmark of civilization, yet informal or horizontal sanctions have attracted more attention of late. We study experimentally a collective action dilemma and test whether subjects choose a formal sanction scheme that costs less than the surplus it makes possible, as predicted by standard economic theory, or instead opt for the use of informal sanctions (IS) or no sanctions. Our subjects choose, and succeed in using, IS surprisingly often, their voting decisions being responsive to the cost of formal sanctions. Adoption by voting enhances the efficiency of both IS and non-deterrent formal sanctions. Results are qualitatively confirmed under several permutations of the experimental design. Copyright 2014, Oxford University Press.

[1]  Jean-Robert Tyran,et al.  State or nature? Endogenous formal versus informal sanctions in the voluntary provision of public goods , 2015 .

[2]  Jean-Robert Tyran.  Voting When Money and Morals Conflict: An Experimental Test of Expressive Voting , 2004 .

[3]  John Locke,et al.  Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration , 2003 .

[4]  Louis Putterman,et al.  Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy , 2008, The American economic review.

[5]  Hawaii,et al.  Supporting Online Material Materials and Methods Figs. S1 to S6 Tables S1 and S2 Database S1 Antisocial Punishment across Societies , 2022 .

[6]  E. Fehr.  A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation , 1998 .

[7]  Anabela Botelho,et al.  Social norms and social choice , 2005 .

[8]  Louis Putterman,et al.  Cooperation and Punishment , 2010, Science.

[9]  Louis Putterman,et al.  The Ecology of Collective Action: A Public Goods and Sanctions Experiment with Controlled Group Formation , 2007 .

[10]  Thomas Hobbes,et al.  Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil , 2015 .

[11]  Jean-Robert Tyran,et al.  Achieving Compliance When Legal Sanctions are Non-Deterrent , 2006 .

[12]  Michael Kosfeld,et al.  Institution Formation in Public Goods Games , 2006 .

[13]  Nikos Nikiforakis,et al.  A comparative statics analysis of punishment in public-good experiments , 2008 .

[14]  S. Frederick.  Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 19, Number 4—Fall 2005—Pages 25–42 Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making , 2022 .

[15]  E. Fehr,et al.  Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity , 2000, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[16]  Simon Gächter,et al.  Reciprocity, culture and human cooperation: previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[17]  Hans-Theo Normann,et al.  A Within-Subject Analysis of Other-Regarding Preferences , 2010, Games Econ. Behav..

[18]  E. Ostrom.  Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems , 2010, American Economic Review.

[19]  B. Rockenbach,et al.  The Competitive Advantage of Sanctioning Institutions , 2006, Science.

[20]  Matthias Sutter,et al.  Choosing the Carrot or the Stick? Endogenous Institutional Choice in Social Dilemma Situations , 2010 .

[21]  Kenju Kamei,et al.  Democracy and resilient pro-social behavioral change: an experimental study , 2014, Soc. Choice Welf..

[22]  A. Lindner.  Does Transparency of Central Banks Produce Multiple Equilibria on Currency Markets? , 2006 .

[23]  Boyu Zhang,et al.  The evolution of sanctioning institutions: an experimental approach to the social contract , 2013 .

[24]  J. Ledyard.  Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research , 1994 .

[25]  Ananish Chaudhuri.  Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature , 2011 .

[26]  B. Rockenbach,et al.  Institution Design in Social Dilemmas: How to Design If You Must? , 2009 .

[27]  R. Selten.  Reexamination of the perfectness concept for equilibrium points in extensive games , 1975, Classics in Game Theory.

[28]  M. Kocher,et al.  Does Stake Size Matter for Cooperation and Punishment? , 2006 .

[29]  Sebastian Kube,et al.  Institution Formation and Cooperation with Heterogeneous Agents , 2015 .

[30]  A. Schram,et al.  Authority and Centrality: Power and Cooperation in Social Dilemma Networks , 2015 .

[31]  Jean-Robert Tyran,et al.  A Little Fairness May Induce a Lot of Redistribution in Democracy , 2002 .

[32]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Behavioral Game Theory Experiments and Modeling , 2015 .

[33]  David M. Kreps,et al.  Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma , 1982 .

[34]  Jean-Robert Tyran,et al.  Microfoundations of Social Capital , 2009 .

[35]  W. Chaney.  Anglo-Saxon Church Dues: A Study in Historical Continuity , 1963, Church History.

[36]  Jeffrey Paul Carpenter,et al.  Punishing Free-Riders: How Group Size Affects Mutual Monitoring and the Provision of Public Goods , 2004, Games Econ. Behav..

[37]  G. Scofield,et al.  The calculus of consent. , 1990, The Hastings Center report.

[38]  Laura K. Gee,et al.  Gun for hire: Delegated enforcement and peer punishment in public goods provision , 2012 .

[39]  M. Rabin,et al.  Understanding Social Preference with Simple Tests , 2001 .

[40]  U. Fischbacher.  z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments , 1999 .

[41]  E. Ostrom,et al.  Covenants with and without a Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible , 1992, American Political Science Review.

[42]  张谷.  实验经济学（Experimental Economics）研究思路及成果应用简述 , 1994 .

[43]  Antonio J. Morales,et al.  An individualistic approach to institution formation in public good games , 2016 .

[44]  Matthias Sutter,et al.  Choosing the Stick or the Carrot? Endogenous Institutional Choice in Social Dilemma Situations , 2006 .

[45]  L. Putterman,et al.  Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry and Efficiency , 2005 .

[46]  A. Riedl,et al.  The economics of altruistic punishment and the maintenance of cooperation , 2008, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[47]  T. Palfrey,et al.  Anomalous Behavior in Public Goods Experiments: How Much and Why? , 1997 .

[48]  David Masclet,et al.  Punishment, counterpunishment and sanction enforcement in a social dilemma experiment , 2007 .

[49]  Ernesto Reuben,et al.  Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations , 2009, Games Econ. Behav..

[50]  Josie I. Chen.  Obedience to Rules with Mild Sanctions: The Roles of Peer Punishment and Voting , 2014 .

[51]  R. Boyd,et al.  Coordinated Punishment of Defectors Sustains Cooperation and Can Proliferate When Rare , 2010, Science.

[52]  L. Putterman,et al.  Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes: An Experiment , 2010 .

[53]  L. Putterman,et al.  Judicial Error and Cooperation , 2014 .

[54]  Torsten Röhl,et al.  An economic experiment reveals that humans prefer pool punishment to maintain the commons , 2012, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[55]  Todd L. Cherry,et al.  Voting, Punishment, and Public Goods , 2007 .

[56]  Sebastian Kube,et al.  The Interaction of Legal and Social Norm Enforcement , 2010, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[57]  Wolfgang J. Luhan,et al.  Cedex Discussion Paper Series , 2022 .

[58]  E. Fehr,et al.  Altruistic punishment in humans , 2002, Nature.

[59]  Alvaro Sandroni,et al.  Moral Bias in Large Elections: Theory and Experimental Evidence , 2009, American Political Science Review.

[60]  E. Ostrom,et al.  Lab Experiments for the Study of Social-Ecological Systems , 2010, Science.

[61]  Thomas Hobbes,et al.  LEVIATHAN Or the Matter Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil , 1946 .

[62]  R. Mark Isaac,et al.  Group Size Effects in Public Goods Provision: The Voluntary Contributions Mechanism , 1988 .

[63]  Louis Putterman,et al.  Can second-order punishment deter perverse punishment? , 2006 .

[64]  Walid Hichri,et al.  Interior collective optimum in a voluntary contribution to a public-goods game , 2004 .

[65]  A. Sen,et al.  Isolation, Assurance and the Social Rate of Discount , 1967 .

[66]  James Andreoni,et al.  Why free ride?: Strategies and learning in public goods experiments , 1988 .

[67]  Nikos Nikiforakis,et al.  Punishment and Counter-punishment in Public Good Games: Can We Still Govern Ourselves? , 2005 .

[68]  James Andreoni,et al.  An Experimental Test of the Public-Goods Crowding-Out Hypothesis , 1993 .

[69]  L. Putterman,et al.  State or Nature? Formal vs. Informal Sanctioning in the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods , 2011 .

[70]  L. Putterman,et al.  Who to punish? Individual decisions and majority rule in mitigating the free rider problem , 2009 .

[71]  J. Zelmer.  Linear Public Goods Experiments: A Meta-Analysis , 2003 .

[72]  E. Fehr,et al.  Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments , 1999, SSRN Electronic Journal.

[73]  Robert Shupp,et al.  The Effect of Rewards and Sanctions in Provision of Public Goods , 2006 .

[74]  G. Tullock,et al.  The calculus of consent : logical foundations of constitutional democracy , 1962 .

[75]  L. Putterman,et al.  Communication and punishment in voluntary contribution experiments , 2006 .