Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/70165 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
Jena Economic Research Papers No. 2012,047
Publisher: 
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
Often in cooperative situations, many aspects of the decision-making environment are uncertain. We investigate how cooperation is shaped by the way information about risk is presented (from description or from experience) and by differences in risky environments. Drawing on research from risky choice, we compare choices in stochastic social dilemmas to those in lotteries with equivalent levels of risk. Cooperation rates in games vary with different levels of risk across decision situations with the same expected outcomes, thereby mimicking behavior in lotteries. Risk presentation, however, only affected choices in lotteries, not in stochastic games. Process data suggests that people respond less to probabilities in the stochastic social dilemmas than in the lotteries. The findings highlight how an uncertain environment shapes cooperation and call for models of the underlying decision processes.
Subjects: 
Decisions from Experience
Social Dilemma
Cooperation
Risky Choice
Public Good
JEL: 
C72
C73
C92
D81
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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