Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Mohammad Salahshour, Vincent Oberhauser, Matteo Smerlak
Summary: Identifying mechanisms for sustaining costly cooperation among self-interested agents is a crucial issue in social and biological sciences. Peer punishment has been proposed as a possible solution, but the noise inherent in real-world human punishment has been overlooked in standard experimental designs. This study demonstrates that stochastic punishment falls short in sustaining cooperation, leading to a rise in antisocial punishment.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Zhi Li, Po-Hsuan Lin, Si-Yuan Kong, Dongwu Wang, John Duffy
Summary: The study demonstrates the feasibility of conducting large-scale economic decision-making experiments using mobile platforms, blurring the lines between laboratory and field experiments. Despite the specific order in which the games are played, results are still recognizable, which differ from traditional laboratory experiments.
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Bo Gao, Xuan Liu, Zhong-Zhou Lan, Jie Hong, Wenguang Zhang
Summary: This study focuses on the impact of preference selection on the evolution of cooperation in the voluntary public goods game. The results indicate that increasing preference parameters can encourage more players to participate in the game, benefiting the maintenance of cooperative behavior.
PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Elias Fernandez Domingos, Jelena Grujic, Juan C. Burguillo, Francisco C. Santos, Tom Lenaerts
Summary: This study introduces a population-based learning model to investigate how individuals facing collective risks acquire strategies through reinforcement learning amidst uncertainties. The research shows that uncertainty about time frames can lead to more extreme reactions and polarization, reducing the number of agents contributing fairly in collective action problems.
SIMULATION MODELLING PRACTICE AND THEORY
(2021)
Article
Economics
George Parsons, Laura A. Paul, Kent D. Messer
Summary: During the spring of 2020, many households faced hardships due to COVID-19, while the number of people participating in outdoor recreation increased. The impact of these experiences on the public's willingness to pay for environmental public goods remains unknown. In the early months of the pandemic, a survey was conducted to assess the value of statewide water quality improvements in Delaware. Despite reporting various hardships, the mean household willingness to pay only declined by 7% by May 2020.
JOURNAL OF BENEFIT-COST ANALYSIS
(2022)
Article
International Relations
Rebecca E. Schiel, Bruce M. Wilson, Malcolm Langford, Christopher M. Faulkner
Summary: This study re-examines the impact of democracy on the provision of public goods, focusing on basic water access as a locally provisioned public good. The findings suggest that democracy has little effect on basic water access at the national level, but in poor states, the presence of local elections and their level of freedom and competitiveness are positively correlated with water access rates. Furthermore, the positive effects of local democracy on water access in poor states increase with the longevity of democratic institutions. More nuanced research is needed to understand public goods provision, considering both local institutional characteristics and development metrics.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
(2023)
Article
Development Studies
Yang -Yang Zhou, Guy Grossman, Shuning Ge
Summary: Large arrivals of refugees have raised concerns about potential tensions with host communities, but this study in Uganda shows that greater presence of refugees has actually led to improvements in local development for the host communities. Moreover, there is no evidence of negative or positive attitudes towards migrants or migration policy associated with the presence of refugees.
Article
Economics
P. Jean-Jacques Herings, Ronald Peeters, Anastas P. Tenev, Frank Thuijsman
Summary: In a local interaction model, agents play bilateral prisoners' dilemmas with their immediate neighbors and adopt the strategy with the highest average payoff in their observed local neighborhood. The partially cooperative strategy limits the diffusion of altruistic behavior, but large groups of altruists may facilitate the spread of the partially cooperative strategy.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
(2021)
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Chaoqian Wang, Chaochao Huang
Summary: This study explores the middle ground between local neighbor interactions and global random interactions in spatial public goods games from the perspective of strategy updating. The results show that the influence of local and global selection on cooperation differs under different synergy factors. Additionally, the study considers the tendencies of cooperative and defective agents towards global selection and finds that different access patterns have different effects on cooperation behavior.
PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Urban Studies
Kristine Canales, Martha Kropf, Suzanne Leland, Cherie Maestas
Summary: Tiebout's theory suggests that the efficient provision of public goods through market forces may be disrupted by private amenity choices. A conjoint experiment is conducted to examine how citizens make choices among apartment homes with different public and club good attributes. The findings show that residents are willing to pay for additional safety provided by an apartment complex, indicating that the city's tax expenditure bundle is not the sole consideration in residential location choice.
URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW
(2023)
Article
Development Studies
Tanu Kumar, Alison E. Post, Isha Ray, Megan Otsuka, Francesc Pardo-Bosch
Summary: Access to public services in low- and middle-income countries is influenced by government spending and prioritization, with service quality potentially varying significantly based on socioeconomic and political factors. Studying the key dimension of service quality, such as intermittency, is crucial for understanding how to manage network infrastructure effectively. The allocation of intermittency is shaped by the structure of the infrastructure network, highlighting the importance of examining service quality separately from access.
Article
Mathematics, Applied
Yongchao Huang, Tianyu Ren, Junjun Zheng, Wenyi Liu, Mengshu Zhang
Summary: This study investigates the promotion of cooperation in the public goods game through the introduction of dynamic payoff allocation and loners. The results show that within a specific range of parameters, the mechanism of dynamic payoff allocation and the existence of loners can effectively promote cooperation.
APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTATION
(2023)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Astrid Cullmann, Caroline Stiel
Summary: This study investigates the impact of demographic changes on local public services, using the case of water service in Germany. By applying a structural production function approach to a large panel dataset of German water utilities between 2003 and 2014, the study provides evidence that demographics and their changes significantly affect the productivity and costs of the utilities. The results reveal that demographic changes lead to significant cost increases in rapidly shrinking and ageing regions. The findings have important policy implications for preventing growing regional disparities in public services.
Article
Development Studies
Joyita Roy Chowdhury
Summary: This study used experimental methods to examine the cooperation of male farmers from different social groups in contributing to a collective good in rural villages in India. Results showed differences in cooperation among villages, with wealthy and influential farmers investing less in the provision of a public good.
JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
(2022)
Article
Political Science
Scott Clifford, Geoffrey Sheagley, Spencer Piston
Summary: The use of survey experiments has become increasingly popular in political science. Contrary to common fears, repeated measures designs tend to produce the same results as more common designs while significantly increasing precision. These designs also offer new insights into treatment effect size and heterogeneity.
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
(2021)