Abstract:

In many real-world contexts, individuals face collective action problems at multiple scales, effectively choosing between local and global cooperation. Unlike isolated public goods scenarios, which can be solved if enough players are willing to cooperate, multilevel collective action problems present an additional difficulty of coordination in working towards the same goals. Through a behavioural experiment, we explore how people navigate these multiscale cooperation dilemmas and investigate the interaction between cooperative behaviour and perceptions of social identity. We find that introducing a local cooperation option undermines global cooperation efforts. Moreover, the presence of a local option exacerbates parochial biases, partly connected to a performance-cohesion effect, whereby successful cooperation within groups is associated with social identification with that group. While increasing the relative saliency and rewards of global cooperation can recover global cooperation levels, parochial biases persist. Our results highlight how complex group structures can influence behaviour and beliefs, potentially hindering global cooperation efforts and introducing complicated social cohesion dynamics.

Speaker's social media:

@charliepilgrim