Nonverbal Feedback, Strategic Signaling, and Nonmonetary Sanctioning: New Experimental Evidence from a Public Goods Game
Replication in Experimental Economics
ISBN: 978-1-78560-351-8, eISBN: 978-1-78560-350-1
Publication date: 13 October 2015
Abstract
Recent experiments show that feedback transmission can mitigate opportunistic behavior in repeated social dilemmas. Two nonexcludable explanations have been investigated: strategic signaling and nonmonetary sanctioning. This literature builds on the intuition that under both partner matching (where the same groups of players interact many times) and stranger matching (where groups change continuously), feedback may work as a nonmonetary sanctioning device, but only the former also allows for strategic signaling. Empirical evidence on the two explanations is mixed. Moreover, the usual design may give rise to confounding matching protocol effects.
My experiment provides a novel empirical testbed for different channels by which feedback – costless disapproval points – may affect behavior in a repeated public goods game. In particular, it is based on a random matching scheme that neutralizes the confounding effects of different matching protocols on behavior.
The transmission of feedback is found to foster prosocial behavior. The data favor the nonmonetary sanctioning explanation rather than the signaling hypothesis.
This study provides a novel set of evidence that (i) communication may mitigate selfishness in social dilemmas and (ii) the source of this phenomenon may be linked to the emotional reaction that communication evokes in humans.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
This paper previously circulated under the title “Strategic signaling or emotional sanctioning? An experimental study of ex post communication in a repeated public goods game” and is a thoroughly revised version of CES WP 2013.11 and WU Wien Economics WP 161. I wish to thank Enrique Fatas and an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions, and Juergen Bracht, Tamás Csermely, Guillaume Fréchette, Yukihito Funaki, Daniel Houser, Nicolas Jacquemet, Frédéric Koessler, Martin Leroch, David Masclet, Ernesto Reuben, Rupert Sausgruber, Thomas A. Stephens, Jean-Marc Tallon, Antoine Terracol, Christian Traxler, Marie Claire Villeval, and Marc Willinger for inspiring discussions at various stages of my work. Participants at 2013 Mainz Workshop “Microfoundations of group conflict,” 2013 International Meeting of the Association for Public Economic Theory in Lisbon and 2014 ADRES PhD Meeting in Paris delivered helpful comments. Maxim Frolov and Ivan Ouss provided assistance in running the experiments. This work was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), through the program Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-10–LABX_93-01). This research was performed within the framework of the LABEX CORTEX (ANR-11-LABX-0042) of Université de Lyon, within the program Investissements d’Avenir (ANR-11-IDEX-007) operated by the French National Research Agency (ANR).
Citation
Zylbersztejn, A. (2015), "Nonverbal Feedback, Strategic Signaling, and Nonmonetary Sanctioning: New Experimental Evidence from a Public Goods Game", Replication in Experimental Economics (Research in Experimental Economics, Vol. 18), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 153-181. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0193-230620150000018006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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