Experimental Evidence on Cooperation, Political Affiliation, and Group Size

• The main objective of this paper is to strengthen the knowledge about the relationship between cooperation and political affiliation. For this purpose, I carry out an incentivized N-person prisoner’s dilemma experiment. I find that left-wing voters cooperate more than right-wing voters in 3-person prisoner’s dilemmas. However, this difference in cooperation tapers off with group size due to a heterogeneous response to larger decision groups. While leftists cooperate less as the group size increases, I find no significant group size effect for rightists. These findings can partly be explained by differences in beliefs about the cooperativeness of others, but a substantial part remains unexplained.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Cooperation

Social dilemma

Political ideology

Group size

Experiment

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

rap (ämneskategori)