Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/301029 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
ECONtribute Discussion Paper No. 323
Publisher: 
University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI), Bonn and Cologne
Abstract: 
An effective way to foster cooperation is to monitor behaviour and sanction freeriding. Yet, previous studies have shown that cooperation quickly declines when sanctioning mechanisms are removed. We test if explicitly expressing trust in players' capability to maintain cooperation after the removal of sanctions, i.e. vertical communication of trust, has the potential to alleviate this drop in compliance. Four incentivized public-goods experiments (N = 2423) find that the vertical communication of trust maintains cooperation upon the removal of centralized (Study 1), thirdparty (Study 2), and peer punishment (Study 3), and this effect extends beyond single interactions (Study 4). In all studies, vertical trust communication increases mutual trust among players, providing support to the idea that vertically communicating trust can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Extrapolating our findings to natural environments, they suggest that authorities should carefully consider how they communicate the lifting of rules and sanctions.
Subjects: 
Cooperation
Vertical Trust
Punishment
Public Good
Experiment
JEL: 
C92
D91
H4
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.