Psychological Science ›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (2): 446-452.

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The Effects of the Social Value Orientation and Feedback Formats on Decision Behavior in the Dynamic Public Goods Dilemma

Li-Zhou HE1,2,Ran BIANHong-Sheng CHE4   

  • Received:2011-12-31 Revised:2012-10-18 Online:2013-03-20 Published:2013-03-20
  • Contact: Ran BIAN

社会价值取向和反馈方式对公共物品困境中决策行为的影响

何力舟1,2,卞冉1,车宏生1   

  1. 1. 北京师范大学
    2. 北京智鼎优源管理咨询有限公司
  • 通讯作者: 卞冉

Abstract: A public good (PG) is a commodity or service made available to all members of a group, and its provision depends on the voluntary contribution of its members. Once provided, all members in the group can enjoy the benefits of the PG, regardless of whether they contributed or not. Hence, there is a temptation to “free-ride” in the hope that others will contribute. Considered the influence of both individual factors and situational factors, this study focuses on social value orientation and feedback formats. Specifically, we hypothesized that the social value orientation and feedback formats both had significantly influence on participants’ cooperative behavior and that there would be significant interaction between the two variables. In this study, a public good dilemma (PGD) experiment consisted of 20 rounds of PGD games was conducted to test the hypotheses with a 3 (feedback formats)×2(social value orientation) between-subjects design, where participants needed to make decisions about whether to put their “money” in the group account or their individual accounts each round. The results show: (1) The main effect of social value orientation is significant on the decision behavior of the decision maker in repeated public goods dilemma games. Compared with non-cooperative people, cooperative people are much more inclined to cooperate. (2) The main effect of feedback formats is not significant. (3) The interaction between social value orientation and feedback formats is significant. The cooperation behavior of non-cooperative people is significantly affected by feedback formats, but cooperative people behave consistently no matter what format of feedback they receive. (4) Compared with the non-feedback condition, participants under group feedback condition are more likely to cooperate, while participants under individual feedback condition are inclined to cooperate less. The dynamic adaptive changes resulted from feedback, however, make the relationship of the factors in the experiments more complicated.

Key words: Social dilemma, Public goods dilemma, Social value orientation, Feedback, Cooperation behavior

摘要: 本研究通过模拟投资实验和问卷来探讨重复型公共物品困境中社会价值取向(SVO)与信息反馈方式对决策行为的影响。结果表明:(1)合作型SVO的个体比非合作型个体表现出更多的合作行为;(2)SVO与信息反馈方式的交互作用岁实验轮次越来越显著,非合作型的个体会受信息反馈方式的影响,而合作型个体则不易受反馈方式的影响;(3)与无反馈的条件相比,集体反馈倾向于促进个体的合作行为,个体反馈倾向于抑制合作行为,但反馈所造成的适应性改变使情况更为复杂。

关键词: 社会困境, 公共物品困境, 社会价值取向, 反馈, 合作行为

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