Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments
通过实验证明，在公共品博弈中，合作者愿意自费惩罚搭便车者，且惩罚力度随搭便车程度加重；惩罚机会的存在能减少搭便车行为。
Casual evidence as well as daily experience suggest that many people have a strong aversion against being the 'sucker' in social dilemma situations. As a consequence, those who cooperate may be willing to punish free-riding, even if this is costly for them and even if they cannot expect future benefits from their punishment activities. A main purpose of this paper is to show experimentally that there is indeed a widespread willingness of the cooperators to punish the free-riders. Our results indicate that this holds true even if punishment is costly and does not provide any material benefits for the punisher. In addition, we provide evidence that free-riders are punished the more heavily the more they deviate from the cooperation levels of the cooperators. Potential free-riders, therefore, can avoid or at least reduce punishment by increasing their cooperation levels. This, in turn, suggests that in the presence of punishment opportunities there will be less free riding. Testing this conjecture is the other major aim of our paper.