Intergenerational Cooperation: an Experimental Study on Beliefs

We report on an experiment in which subjects older than 55 years old and subjects younger than 26 years old play repeatedly 4 versions of the centipede game. For each game we define four treatments that allow us to study cooperation and belief formation of these two age groups. We find that beliefs about the others' age group shape the outcome: while seniors are cooperative and generous with juniors when they incur lower opportunity costs, for juniors it is when playing with seniors that they learn the way to the theoretical solution by smoothly decreasing their cooperation levels

Health promotion messages: The role of social presence for food choices

Bittner JV, Kulesz MM. Health promotion messages: The role of social presence for food choices. Appetite. 2015;87:336-343.We investigated whether social presence cues encourage consumers to self-regulate and select healthier food products. In the first experiment, workers completed food choices in an e-commerce environment. After the activation of health-related goals, they saw a social presence cue and were asked to choose between healthy and unhealthy food options. The analyses revealed main effects of social presence and health goal activation on food choices. These effects were additive, such that the combination of social presence and health goals induced significantly healthier choices compared with the control group. The second experiment further examined social presence cues that were presented on a menu. The results showed significant effects on food choices and on the perceived self-regulatory success in dieting. These findings indicate that social presence cues could be employed to increase healthful eating and, furthermore, that it may be useful to co-activate multiple cues in health promotion messages

''It's not you, it's me: an experimental study of employers' wage setting behavior''

Using an intergenerational trilateral laboratory gift-exchange game, we investigate how employers' own performance in a real effort task impacts on the wage setting behavior of younger and older employers. We find that the employers' own past performance strongly affects wage setting behavior, though we do not find significant differences concerning the employers' or employees' age

Extraction Behaviour and Income Inequalities Resulting from a Common Pool Resource Exploitation

Using an experimental approach, we investigate income distribution among heterogeneous subjects exploiting a Common Pool Resource (CPR). The CPR experiments are conducted in continuous time and under different treatments, including combinations of communication and monitoring. While many studies have focused on how real-life income inequality affects cooperation and resource use among groups, here we examine the relationship between individuals’ cooperative traits, harvest inequalities, and institutional arrangements. We found that: (1) When combined with monitoring, communication decreases harvest inequality—that is, harvest is more equally distributed among individuals in all treatments; and (2) the cooperative trait of individuals significantly predicts harvest inequality. The relative proportion of non-cooperators and cooperators (i.e., the cooperative dependency ratio) drives the within-session harvest distribution—as the cooperative dependency ration increases, the income distribution becomes increasingly unequal, leading to a downward spiral of resource overexploitation and scarcity. Finally, our results suggest that harvest and income inequalities are contingent to resource abundance, because under this regime, non-cooperators exert the greatest amount effort—thus leading to resource scarcity and income inequalities

OGUMI—A new mobile application to conduct common-pool resource experiments in continuous time

OGUMI is an Android-based open source mobile application for conducting Common-Pool Resource Experiments, Choice Experiments, and Questionnaires in the field, in the laboratory, and online. A main feature of OGUMI is its capacity to capture real-time changes in human behaviour in response to a dynamically varying resource. OGUMI is simple (for example, likewise other existing software, it does not require expertise in behavioural game theory), stable, and extremely flexible with respect to the user-resource model running in the background. Here we present the motivation for the development of OGUMI and we discuss its main features with an example application

Dissuasive effect, information provision, and consumer reactions to the term 'Biotechnology': The case of reproductive interventions in farmed fish.

Biotechnology can provide innovative and efficient tools to support sustainable development of aquaculture. It is generally accepted that use of the term 'genetically modified' causes controversy and conflict among consumers, but little is known about how using the term 'biotechnology' as a salient feature on product packaging affects consumer preferences. In an online discrete choice experiment consisting of two treatments, a set of 1005 randomly chosen Swedish consumers were surveyed about use of hormone and triploidization sterilization techniques for salmonids. The information given to the treatment group included an additional sentence stating that the triploidization technique is an application of biotechnology, while the control group received the same text but without reference to biotechnology. Analysis using a hierarchical Bayes approach revealed significant consumer reactions to the term biotechnology. When the term was included in information, variation in consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates increased significantly. Moreover, some participants were dissuaded towards an option guaranteeing no biotechnological intervention in production of fish. These results have multiple implications for research and for the food industry. For research, they indicate the importance of examining the distribution of variation in WTP estimates for more complete characterization of the effects of information on consumer behavior. For the food industry, they show that associating food with biotechnology creates more variability in demand. Initiatives should be introduced to reduce the confusion associated with the term biotechnology among consumers

Live view of a running session in the administrator interface.

<p>The dynamic graph indicates the temporal evolution of the resource (orange) and the harvest of all users. In this example, users started harvesting at time <i>t</i> = 480 <i>s</i> and thereafter reduced the resource from its carrying capacity of 100 to almost 0 within 200 s. The administrator can also zoom to select the desired data range in the stylized graph on top of the main panel.</p

Screenshot of the questionnaire session.

<p>Screenshot of the questionnaire session.</p

Temporal dynamics of resource levels obtained in each treatment.

<p>Temporal dynamics of resource levels obtained in each treatment.</p