Collaborative Research: Asymmetric Power in Paired Common Pool and Public Good Games: Experiments, Institutions, and Behavior

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供资金的。社会困境是这样一种环境的特征，在这种环境中，个人对自己物质自利的完全追求可能会产生低效的总体结果。两个这样的环境是以公共物品和公共资源共享为特征的，在这种环境中，社会困境可以表现为搭便车和公地结果的悲剧。在公共产品博弈中，个人决定自己的捐赠中有多少可以为公共利益做出贡献。在共享池资源博弈中，个人决定从共享池中退出多少。在这两种情况下，如果决策者不合作，群体资源就会受到破坏。许多实地和实验室研究的重点是替代性政治经济机构在对抗个人提供公共产品不足和过度开发公共资源的倾向方面的有效性。然而，以前的研究并没有集中在这些环境中权力不对称的含义。这里提出的研究从代理同时移动的设置开始，而不知道其他代理的动作。这些设置是为配对比较而设计的，在这种比较中，替代策略的回报结果在不同的治疗中保持不变。这一初步分析使我们能够检查公共产品和公共池环境中的行为差异，这些差异与行为规范的不对称性有关，而不是与战略回报结果的差异有关。然后，研究人员进行了两对顺序移动游戏的实验，在这些游戏中，力量不对称的第二个移动者在第一个移动者之后做出决定。这些“老板和国王”利用先行者的合作选择的机会因设计环境的不同而有系统地不同。核心问题是，与这些老板和国王相关的权力是否会导致剥削，以及这种权力在多大程度上会对先行者的合作意愿产生重大影响。我们检查这些影响是否在配对的公共产品和公共池资源设置中有所不同。这项研究对社区集体行动如何严重依赖于机构的设计提供了重要的见解，这些机构允许透明度，以及对与具有行政控制的代理人相关的剥削权力的控制。它还将对决策者的行为规范如何与社会困境的结构产生重要联系，以及这些规范如何与旨在促进合作的机构相互作用等问题产生重要的见解。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Social dilemmas characterize environments in which individuals' exclusive pursuit of their own material self-interest can produce inefficient aggregate outcomes. Two such environments are those characterized by public goods and common pool resources, in which the social dilemmas can be manifested in free riding and tragedy of the commons outcomes. In public goods games, individuals decide how much of their endowments to contribute to the public good. In common-pool resource games, individuals decide how much to withdraw from the common-pool. In both settings, group resources are undermined if decision makers act non-cooperatively. Much field and laboratory research has focused on the effectiveness of alternative political-economic institutions in counteracting individuals' tendencies to under-provide public goods and over-exploit common pool resources. Previous research, however, has not focused on the implications of power asymmetries in these settings. The research proposed here begins with settings in which agents move simultaneously, without knowledge of other agents' actions. The settings are designed for pair-wise comparisons in which payoff consequences of alternative strategies are held constant across treatments. This initial analysis allows us to examine behavioral differences across public good and common pool settings that are linked to asymmetries in norms of behavior, as opposed to differences in payoff consequences of strategies. The research then moves to experiments with pairs of sequential move games in which second movers with asymmetric power make their decisions after first movers. The opportunities for these "bosses and kings" to exploit cooperative choices of first movers is systematically varied across design settings. The central questions are whether the powers associated with these bosses and kings lead to exploitation, and to what extent this power has significant effects on the willingness of first movers to behave cooperatively. We examine whether these effects differ across the paired public good and common pool resource settings. This research provides important insights into how community collective action depends critically on the design of institutions that allows for transparency, as well as control over the exploitive powers associated with agents with administrative control. It will also yield important insights into how decision makers' norms of behavior may be importantly linked to the structure of the social dilemma and how such norms interact with institutions designed to facilitate cooperation.