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The role of institutional incentives and the exemplar in promoting cooperation.

ABSTRACT: People on average do not play their individually rational Nash equilibrium (NE) strategy in game experiments based on the public goods game (PGG) that model social dilemmas. Differences from NE behavior have also been observed in PGG experiments that include incentives to cooperate, especially when these are peer-incentives administered by the players themselves. In our repeated PGG experiment, an institution rewards and punishes individuals based on their contributions. The primary experimental result is that institutions which both reward and punish (IRP) promote cooperation significantly better than either institutions which only punish (IP) or which only reward (IR), and that IP has contribution levels significantly above IR. Although comparing their single-round NE strategies correctly predicts which incentives are best at promoting cooperation, individuals do not play these strategies overall. Our analysis shows that other intrinsic motivations that combine conforming behavior with reactions to being rewarded/punished provide a better explanation of observed outcomes. In our experiments, some individuals who display more cooperation than other individuals can be regarded as the exemplars (or leaders). The role of these exemplars in promoting cooperation provides important insights into understanding cooperation in PGG and the effectiveness of institutional incentives at promoting desirable societal behavior.

SUBMITTER: Wu JJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5377375 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The role of institutional incentives and the exemplar in promoting cooperation.

Wu Jia-Jia JJ Li Cong C Zhang Bo-Yu BY Cressman Ross R Tao Yi Y

Scientific reports 20140922

People on average do not play their individually rational Nash equilibrium (NE) strategy in game experiments based on the public goods game (PGG) that model social dilemmas. Differences from NE behavior have also been observed in PGG experiments that include incentives to cooperate, especially when these are peer-incentives administered by the players themselves. In our repeated PGG experiment, an institution rewards and punishes individuals based on their contributions. The primary experimental ...[more]

PMID: 25242265

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Project description:BackgroundThe Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) Programme was designed to promote the digitisation of hospital services in England. Selected provider organisations that were reasonably digitally-mature were funded with the expectation that they would achieve internationally recognised levels of excellence and act as exemplars ('GDE sites') and share their learning with somewhat less digitally-mature Fast Follower (FF) sites.AimsThis paper explores how partnerships between GDE and FF sites have promoted knowledge sharing and learning between organisations.MethodsWe conducted an independent qualitative longitudinal evaluation of the GDE Programme, collecting data across 36 provider organisations (including acute, mental health and speciality), 12 of which we studied as in-depth ethnographic case studies. We used a combination of semi-structured interviews with programme leads, vendors and national policy leads, non-participant observations of meetings and workshops, and analysed national and local documents. This allowed us to explore both how inter-organisational learning and knowledge sharing was planned, and how it played out in practice. Thematic qualitative analysis, combining findings from diverse data sources, was facilitated by NVivo 11 and drew on sociotechnical systems theory.ResultsFormally established GDE and FF partnerships were perceived to enhance learning and accelerate adoption of technologies in most pairings. They were seen to be most successful where they had encouraged, and were supported by, informal knowledge networking, driven by the mutual benefits of information sharing. Informal networking was enhanced where the benefits were maximised (for example where paired sites had implemented the same technological system) and networking costs minimised (for example by geographical proximity, prior links and institutional alignment). Although the intervention anticipated uni-directional learning between exemplar sites and 'followers', in most cases we observed a two-way flow of information, with GDEs also learning from FFs, through informal networking which also extended to other health service providers outside the Programme. The efforts of the GDE Programme to establish a learning ecosystem has enhanced the profile of shared learning within the NHS.ConclusionsInter-organisational partnerships have produced significant gains for both follower (FF) and exemplar (GDE) sites. Formal linkages were most effective where they had facilitated, and were supported by, informal networking. Informal networking was driven by the mutual benefits of information sharing and was optimised where sites were well aligned in terms of technology, geography and culture. Misalignments that created barriers to networking between organisations in a few cases were attributed to inappropriate choice of partners. Policy makers seeking to promote learning through centrally directed mechanisms need to create a framework that enables networking and informal knowledge transfer, allowing local organisations to develop bottom-up collaboration and exchanges, where they are productive, in an organic manner.

Project description:Cooperation is a relevant and controversial phenomenon in human societies. Indeed, although it is widely recognized essential for tackling social dilemmas, finding suitable policies for promoting cooperation can be arduous and expensive. More often, it is driven by pre-established schemas based on norms and punishments. To overcome this paradigm, we highlight the interplay between the influence of social interactions on networks and spontaneous self-regulating mechanisms on individuals behavior. We show that the presence of these mechanisms in a prisoner's dilemma game, may oppose the willingness of individuals to defect, thus allowing them to behave cooperatively, while interacting with others and taking conflicting decisions over time. These results are obtained by extending the Evolutionary Game Equations over Networks to account for self-regulating mechanisms. Specifically, we prove that players may partially or fully cooperate whether self-regulating mechanisms are sufficiently stronger than social pressure. The proposed model can explain unconditional cooperation (strong self-regulation) and unconditional defection (weak self-regulation). For intermediate self-regulation values, more complex behaviors are observed, such as mutual defection, recruiting (cooperate if others cooperate), exploitation of cooperators (defect if others cooperate) and altruism (cooperate if others defect). These phenomena result from dynamical transitions among different game structures, according to changes of system parameters and cooperation of neighboring players. Interestingly, we show that the topology of the network of connections among players is crucial when self-regulation, and the associated costs, are reasonably low. In particular, a population organized on a random network with a Scale-Free distribution of connections is more cooperative than on a network with an Erdös-Rényi distribution, and, in turn, with a regular one. These results highlight that social diversity, encoded within heterogeneous networks, is more effective for promoting cooperation.

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The role of institutional incentives and the exemplar in promoting cooperation.

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The role of institutional incentives and the exemplar in promoting cooperation.

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