dc.contributor.author | Hauser, OP | |
dc.contributor.author | Hendriks, A | |
dc.contributor.author | Rand, DG | |
dc.contributor.author | Nowak, MA | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-07-30T08:58:14Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2016-11-03 | |
dc.description.abstract | Preserving global public goods, such as the planet’s ecosystem, depends on large-scale cooperation, which is difficult to achieve because the standard reciprocity mechanisms weaken in large groups. Here we demonstrate a method by which reciprocity can maintain cooperation in a large-scale public goods game (PGG). In a first experiment, participants in groups of on average 39 people play one round of a Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) with their two nearest neighbours on a cyclic network after each PGG round. We observe that people engage in “local-to-global” reciprocity, leveraging local interactions to enforce global cooperation: Participants reduce PD cooperation with neighbours who contribute little in the PGG. In response, low PGG contributors increase their contributions if both neighbours defect in the PD. In a control condition, participants do not know their neighbours’ PGG contribution and thus cannot link play in the PD to the PGG. In the control we observe a sharp decline of cooperation in the PGG, while in the treatment condition global cooperation is maintained. In a second experiment, we demonstrate the scalability of this effect: in a 1,000-person PGG, participants in the treatment condition successfully sustain public contributions. Our findings suggest that this simple “local-to-global” intervention facilitates large-scale cooperation. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | This work was supported by Office of Naval Research grant N00014-16-1-2914 and by the John Templeton Foundation. The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics is supported in part by a gift from B Wu and Eric Larson. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Vol. 6, article 36079 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1038/srep36079 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/33578 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Springer Nature | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2016. Open access. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dc.subject | cooperation | en_GB |
dc.subject | large-scale public goods | en_GB |
dc.subject | local-to-global reciprocity | en_GB |
dc.subject | observability | en_GB |
dc.title | Think global, act local: Preserving the global commons | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2018-07-30T08:58:14Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 2045-2322 | |
exeter.article-number | ARTN 36079 | en_GB |
dc.description | This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Scientific Reports | en_GB |