Rule Preference Measurement And Its Impact On Trust And Cooperation

In the perspective of resource allocation rules,it is the essence of Chinese social transformation:the rule's change from the original vertical planning system of" government dominate and care-people depend and obey" to the horizontal market system of "people self-coordination and cooperate",preference on resource allocation rules of individual cognitive level is the micro-foundation of behavior decision-making and interaction equilibrium under the new institutional arrangements.In the transition process,adjustment and transformation of the implicit cognitive status and behavior patterns of the interactive subjects are far behind the transformation of explicit institutional level guided by government,while the new shared cognitive state to solve the uncertainty caused by the collapse of traditional interactive way(explicit institutional transformation)is still far behind,and trustand cooperation among anonymous individuals around the resources allocation is facing new uncertainties.In this regard,the paper adopts field experimental and laboratory experimental methods to explain social and institutional transition experience from the view of microscopic individual's cognition and action,and tries to abstract complex transition scenes to the control experiment,investigates the coordination of trust,cooperation and behavioral adjustmentbetween simplified heterogeneous individuals(especially identity of heterogeneous rules)in transition.The main work of this paper is as following.(1)This paper constructs an analysis framework of transforming society system in the perspective of resource allocation rules and rule-preferences.By reviewing ideological context of resource allocation rules systematically,we discuss property and the basic form of the sharing knowledge,simplify two interaction rules of paternalism and marketization according to the characteristics of transformation in China,summarize and represent the form of preferences in individual interactive process,build theoretical framework based on material preference,other-regarding preferences,rule-preference,estimate beliefs and decision-making equilibrium and its adjustments,try to discuss the way of building utility function which considers the rules or norms into decision analysis.The work above can provide a comprehensive conceptual theoretical framework for field experiments and laboratory control experiments research.(2)This paper adopts field experiments to characterize rule preference and its impact on cooperation governance of urban residential shared resource.On account of the particularity of the economies in transition,this paper researches the governance transition of the public goods from the perspective of micro-subject cognitive status(including rule-preferences and strategy expectation).Through selecting natural control groups,we investigate internal connection with individual cognitive status adjustment,learning knowledge and institutional transformation,and emphasize the adjustment and updating of individual implicit rule preferences and strategy expectation are more important than the explicit system transformation.(3)This paper adopts control experiments to measure rule preferences and study its impact on trust and cooperation in the anonymous interaction in laboratory.Based on Behavioral economics and experimental economics research method,We use game theory to further simplify the connotation of resource allocation rules,try to build a realistic simulation of decision-making scenarios through laboratory control experiments method,measure and identify the distribution of individual's rule preferences in laboratory.Based on heterogeneity of rule preferences,inspect the impact of rule preferences on the process of formation of trust and cooperation among anonymous individuals,and the impact of the rule preferences and other intervention mechanism(such as punishment and communcation)in this process.The results of experiment research show that:1)In the scenarios of urban residential shared resource governance,individuals do not finish updating the knowledge of the new and old rules and stretegies which is the main reason leads to supply dilemma of public goods in residential estate.At present,the governance rule under control of administrative power(government should assume the responsibility of governance)remains a major rule preference;governance rule of"market-oriented level coordination" among house-owners(the owners should share the responsibility of governance)is still in the process of acquisition and adjustment.But most of the residential property owners significantly lower the expectation to rely on government policy,while the expectation of negotiated settlement strategy among owners has increased.This phenomenon above indicates that the cognitive status adjustment of residential property owners is toward the market-oriented level coordination rules which mean owner should be responsible.The acquisition and the adjustment of rule preference and strategy expectation can be affected by individuals' experience.For example,enjoying the welfare in a long time,strong administrative attribute career,the impact of administrative arrangements on individual housing property and the reversal policies of government welfare are not conducive for individuals to adjust new rule preference and strategic knowledge.2)The experiment verifies that people may make likes and dislikes the process and rules of interactions.In other words,the pure rule preferences exist,and this kind of preferences are unrelated to the material result.Like other social preferences,the rule preferences also show heterogeneous distribution state.On the method of measuring rule preference in laboratory,this article provides two ideas for reference:one is the idea of revealed preference,the cost of purchasing access rights of certain rule scene or bids for the power of changing certain rule represents for degree of the preference for corresponding selected rule;the second considers the mapping structure of "scene-role-action-benefit" as a form of interaction rule,if individual's behavior pattern consistents with a mapping relation,that the individual has a preference on the interaction rule.3)In trust game,the fair rule preference has singinficant influence on the level of trust in anonymous individuals.It directly affects trust-belief and recognition of reciprocity cooperation rule among strangers,and through the above two,the fair rule preference indirectly affects trust-action.In public goods game,the fair rule preference is related to the types of cooperative preferences,the stronger the rule preference is,and the higher the probability is for the individual to become a conditional cooperator in public goods experiment.In repeated public goods game,Individuals who have stronger rule preference are more sensitive to the contributions that are deviated from the average.They adjust the interactive behavior rules based on their considered legitimate rules(rule of preference).4)In trust game without punishment,comparing to the rule-indifferent individuals,the principal and agent with rule preferences have a higher level of trust and trustworthiness.Introducting punishment does not change the behavior of rule-preference participants but significantly change the behavior of the rule-indifferent.Individuals with rule preference adjust their behaviors on the basis of their internal value and norm,not the external incentive mechanism.5)In trust experiment with opportunity of non-binding promise,promise significantly improved the agents' returned behavior.Commitment-based mechanism works significantly,while expectation-based mechanism exists but not significantly.This promise effect is dependent on the preference heterogeneity,promise effect is strongly significant in conditional cooperators,while not in selfish individuals,"hidden promise" significantly enhanced the conditional cooperative agents' reciprocal returned behavior,and "public promise" even lowered the selfish agents' reciprocal returned behavior.The experiment verify the promise effect is more aligned with the commitment-based mechanism based on internal norms.