| Cooperation among unrelated strangers is essentially a collective action problem with the inconsistent of individual rationality and collective rationality.It always faces the risk of failure due to the free rider problem.However,there are many cases of successful cooperation in real life.The anomalously cooperative phenomenon not in line with theoretical expectations has led to the long-term concern of the social sciences such as economics,sociology,and psychology on the proposition of “how social cooperation takes place”.In face of prisoners-based social dilemmas,the mainstream theories follow a tradition of Pigou,and focus on establishing the game rule(punishment or reward)to unify the individual rationality and collective rationality,and thus realizes and maintains a cooperative order.However,the previous studies from a perspective of institutional design have neglected the endogenous adjustment possibilities of institutional rules which have the positive impact on cooperative behavior.Cross-cultural evidences from case,field and laboratory studies show that there are at least two major cross-cultural differences: First,the same experiment has significantly different cooperative performance under different cultural scenarios,namely the cross-cultural heterogeneity of social cooperation.Second,many western studies have shown that the effect of an institutional arrangement on the level of cooperation is greater when it is chosen endogenously by the subjects than when it is exogenously and automatically imposed by external authority.It is known as the endogenous premium.Nevertheless,as some scholars pointed out,this conclusion may not apply to the collectivist cultural scene such as China.Accordingly,there are two main issues to be solved: on the one hand,does the cross-cultural difference in the cooperation performance mean that cultural values at the micro-level will influence the decision-making behavior of individual.That is to say,in order to explain the cross-cultural differences,we need to explore the cultural roots of social cooperation.On the other hand,it is necessary to answer whether the direct effect of procedural rules on cooperative behaviors is still established in China with characteristic of collectivism and how to explain the direct effect of procedures on cooperation and its cross-cultural differences.To this issue,inspired by the institutional stratification of the New Institutional School,this study constructs an analytical framework of “cultural tradition-procedural legitimacy-game rules-cooperative behavior” from a perspective of the interaction between culture and institution,which incorporate the legitimizing identity into the individual's preference for examining the influence mechanism of the legitimizing identity about “behavior and procedure” on cooperative behaviors.The main research contents are as follows:(1)From the perspective of the interaction between culture and institutions,this study constructs a framework for explaining cooperative behaviors that incorporates legitimate identity.By reviewing the existing cross-cultural research experience systematically and drawing on the institutional stratification ideas,we construct an analysis framework with the progressive logic of “cultural tradition-procedural legitimacy-game rules-cooperative behavior”,and propose the two paths of institutional rules to constrain human behavior.One is the “material path” of changing the structure of the game payment,the other is the“non-material path” of norm-breaking aversion.Consequently,we can incorporate the legitimate identity acquired by cultural practice into the “non-material path” for the understanding of cross-cultural differences in cooperation models in empirical phenomena.Furthermore,we try to construct a subjective utility function including both the material interest and norm-breaking aversion,and then derive formally the optimal behavior of different types of individuals and their interaction equilibrium to get some basic theoretical hypotheses.All of the above are to provide a comprehensive concept,logic,and mathematical basis for empirical testing.(2)An experimental study of the impact of cultural values on cooperative behavior.Aim at the cross-cultural heterogeneity phenomenon of social cooperation,we make an experimental study to examine the relationship between cultural values and cooperation at both the country and individual level.In the macro level,we use the definitive data to analysis the correlation between the cooperation performance of different cultural groups in public goods experiments and the national cultural dimension characteristics.In the individual level,using the method of control experiment and values scale,we recruit Chinese subjects to conduct an experimental research to test the causal relationship between the cultural values and cooperative behaviors of individuals.The above researches establish a macro-micro link between macroscopic phenomena and micro-causal mechanism.(3)Two experimental studies of the impact of the procedural legitimacy on cooperative behavior.On the basis of the standard public goods experiment,we respectively introduce the minimum contribution suggestion and punishment mechanism into the public goods experiment as game rules,and then set up two types of procedures to make game rules,such as voting by member and imposed by external authority.we compare the cooperation level of Chinese subjects under different procedural situations to test whether the endogenous premium is established in the Chinese context.Furthermore,inspired by the idea of revealed preference,we provide a bidding program to the subjects for purchasing the right of entering into their favorite procedure.The monetary cost that the subjects are willing to pay is used to measure the individual's heterogeneous preference on the procedure,which helps us to test the validity of the theoretical logic incorporating the legitimacy of procedures.In addition,using the individual characteristics,value scores,and other variables collected by the questionnaire,we explore the influence factors of procedural legitimacy.The results of experimental studies show that:1)The cultural root of social cooperation.The empirical results at the country and individual level show that there is a significant positive correlation between the post-materialist values compatible with modern cooperative ethics and the cooperative performance in public goods experiments at both the macro and micro levels.In contrast,the obedience to traditional authority is negatively related to the performance of cooperation.Especially in the case of punishment,the strong tendency of authority obedience weakens the willingness of individual to cooperate in the stranger situation seriously.Therefore,there is a deep cultural logic behind social cooperation.2)The legitimacy logic in the two-stage endogenously institutional experiment with the suggestion of minimum contribution level.On the one hand,the “ex ante” bidding program indicates that Chinese participants generally have preferences on different procedural rules,and overall there is no endogenous premium in the Chinese situation,but individuals with strong voting preferences contribute more under their favorite procedural scene.On the other hand,compared with the low suggestion level,the contribution level of individual under the medium and high intensity suggestion levels is significantly higher,but there is no significant difference between the latter two.Moreover,the regression analysis shows that there is a certain inverted U-shaped relationship between the cooperative behavior and the minimum suggestion level.That is to say,excessively high levels of suggestion do not effectively improve cooperation.3)The legitimacy logic in the two-stage endogenously institutional experiment introducing punishment rules.First,the non-deterrent punishment rules can significantly improve cooperation in both endogenously and exogenously institutional arrangement.Second,there is no endogenous premium in the Chinese situation as a whole.That is,the cooperation level of Chinese subjects does not significantly differ between voting and automatically imposed situation.Third,the “ex post” bidding program indicates that some individuals holding strong enough voting preferences contribute more in voting scene,and the regression analysis shows that the stronger the voting preference at the individual level,the greater the cooperation level in voting situation compared to automatically imposed.In summary,both “ex ante” and “ex post” measurement of the individual's preference on the procedural rules indicate that as a whole the phenomenon of endogenous premium does not exist in the Chinese context.4)The influence factors of procedural legitimacy.Combined with value survey,it is found that the non-material voting preference based on the procedural legitimacy is related to the post-materialist values with self-expression as the core,the individual responsibility perception,general trust,and risk preference that the individual internalizes.This study puts forward two concepts of the legitimizing identity about behavior and procedure to interpret and test the two systemic differences in the cross-cultural experiment.The main innovations are reflected in two aspects of theoretical contribution and empirical evidence.Theoretically,this study constructs the analytical framework of "cultural tradition-procedural legitimacy-game rules-cooperative behavior" and establishes a subjective utility function that integrates material interests and norm-breaking aversion,which provides a theoretical and logical basis for interpreting the heterogeneity of cross-cultural cooperation.Empirically,this stduy demostrates the existence of a link between cultural values and social cooperation at the macro and micro-levels,excluding the possibility of “ecological fallacy”;Furthermore,a series of endogenous institutional experiments confirm that the endogenous premium phenomenon does not hold in China context,and the method of competitive bidding provides a feasible experimental way for measuring "real" procedural preferences,which confirms the heterogeneity of individuals' voting procedures is the source of the difference in cooperative performance under the endogenous institution. |
PDF Full Text Request