Jan Stoop

From the Lab to the Field: Cooperation among Fishermen

We conduct a field experiment to measure cooperation among groups of recreational fishermen at a privately owned fishing facility. Group earnings are greater when group members catch fewer fish. Consistent with classical economic theory, though in contrast to prior results from laboratory experiments, we find no cooperation. A series of additional treatments identifies causes of the difference. We rule out the subject pool and the laboratory setting as potential causes and identify the type of activity involved as the source of the lack of cooperation in our field experiment. When cooperation requires reducing fishing effort, individuals are not cooperative.

Punishment, reward, and cooperation in a framed field experiment

We report the results of a framed field experiment, in which we study the effectiveness of punishment and reward in sustaining cooperation in a social dilemma. Punishments tend to be directed at non-cooperators and rewards are assigned by those who are relatively cooperative. In contrast to the results typically found in laboratory experiments, however, we find that punishments and rewards fail to increase the average level of cooperation.

A Tale of Two Carrots: The Effectiveness of Multiple Reward Stages in a Common Pool Resource Game

Economic efficiency in social dilemma experiments can be increased by allowing for one-shot peer-to-peer sanctions or rewards. In case of sanctions the efficiency gain disappears if the experiment design allows for retaliation, or ‘reciprocity in punishment’. We examine whether efficiency increases or decreases when allowing for reciprocity in rewarding. We find that allowing for reciprocity in rewards increases the number of reward tokens exchanged but at the cost of reduced efficiency in the social dilemma situation.

Time as a Medium of Reward in Three Social Preference Experiments

We report results from three well-known experimental paradigms, where we use time, rather than money, as the salient component of subjects’ incentives. The three experiments, commonly employed to study social preferences, are the dictator game, the ultimatum game and the trust game. All subjects in a session earn the same participation fee, but their choices affect the time at which they are permitted to leave the laboratory, with decisions typically associated with greater own payoff translating into an earlier departure. The modal proposal in both the dictator and ultimatum games is an equal split of the waiting time. In the trust game, there is substantial trust and reciprocity. Overall, social preferences are evident in time allocation decisions. Received laboratory results from dictator, ultimatum, and trust games are robust to the change in reward medium, though there is some suggestive evidence that decisions are even more prosocial with respect to time than money.