Self-Organization for Collective Action: An Experimental Study of Voting on Sanction Regimes
通过实验研究人们在集体行动困境中是否选择正式制裁、非正式制裁或无制裁，发现被试出乎意料地频繁选择并成功使用非正式制裁，且投票能提升效率。
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.