Reputation helps solve the ‘tragedy of the commons’
Abstract
The problem of sustaining a public resource that everybody is free to overuse-the 'tragedy of the commons'-emerges in many social dilemmas, such as our inability to sustain the global climate. Public goods experiments, which are used to study this type of problem, usually confirm that the collective benefit will not be produced. Because individuals and countries often participate in several social games simultaneously, the interaction of these games may provide a sophisticated way by which to maintain the public resource. Indirect reciprocity, 'give and you shall receive', is built on reputation and can sustain a high level of cooperation, as shown by game theorists. Here we show, through alternating rounds of public goods and indirect reciprocity games, that the need to maintain reputation for indirect reciprocity maintains contributions to the public good at an unexpectedly high level. But if rounds of indirect reciprocation are not expected, then contributions to the public good drop quickly to zero. Alternating the games leads to higher profits for all players. As reputation may be a currency that is valid in many social games, our approach could be used to test social dilemmas for their solubility.
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When people make moral decisions, they often consider how others would judge them for behaving selfishly.
“When people make moral decisions, they often consider how others would judge them for behaving selfishly 177,178 .”
From Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response (2020) · cites this paper as [178]
A discriminating strategy that defects in all rounds of the indirect reciprocity game if the recipient is known to have defected in the public goods game can guarantee stable cooperation.
“A discriminating strategy, which defects in all rounds of the indirect reciprocity game if the recipient is known to have defected in the public goods game, can guarantee stable cooperation.”
From Evolution of indirect reciprocity (2005) · cites this paper as [74]
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- Authors
- Milinski, M., Semmann, D., & Krambeck, H.-J.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Milinski, Manfred
- ORCID
- Milinski, Manfred
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2002-01
- Volume
- 415
- Issue
- 6870
- Pages
- 424-426
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2006469409
- Cited by
- 1,371
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 51 · 2025: 65 · 2024: 60 · 2023: 67 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 77 · 2020: 69 · 2019: 65 · 2018: 69 · 2017: 78 · 2016: 77 · 2015: 66 · 2014: 73 · 2013: 82 · 2012: 71
- FWCI
- 95.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Game Theory and Applications
- Keywords
- tragedy of the commons, reputation, indirect reciprocity, public goods game, social dilemmas, cooperation, climate change
- MeSH terms
- Cooperative Behavior, Games, Experimental, Humans, Reward, Socioeconomic Factors, Sociology, Models, Economic
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