The demand for complete and incomplete punishment institutions to promote cooperation
通过实验研究完整和不完整惩罚制度的需求及其对合作的影响,发现不完整制度下合作收益对需求影响较小,而个人合作倾向和子群体协调更重要。
We use an experiment to study the demand for complete and incomplete formal punishment institutions and their ability to promote cooperation. Complete punishment institutions are implemented by the whole group and bind everyone. Incomplete punishment institutions are implemented by a subgroup and bind only the members of this subgroup. We distinguish between strictly incomplete institutions, in which only one subgroup can bind itself while the remaining individuals are unbound, and potentially incomplete institutions, in which two subgroups can bind themselves independently and separately in different institutions, potentially binding everyone. Theoretically, the demand for such formal punishment institutions should depend only on the benefit of cooperation within the group or subgroup bound by the institution. However, we hypothesize and the experimental results confirm that, in the case of incomplete punishment institutions, the benefit of cooperation has a much smaller impact on the demand than in complete punishment institutions. Instead, individuals’ cooperativeness and coordination between the subgroups become important determinants.