Strategic pattern recognition—experimental evidence

The repeated play of an asymmetric Battle of the Sexes is analyzed from the perspective of “strategic pattern recognition.” Convergence to equilibrium patterns (in finite histories) and related concepts like breaking-an-equilibrium-pattern are defined and applied to the data. More than half of 202 pairs of subjects are characterized as weakly converging to a fixed equilibrium pattern. The results also show that subjects tend to break their best pattern in cases where their partners' payoffs are relatively low and that convergence initiation does not pay off. While female subjects frequently reject the males' best equilibrium with anonymous matching, behavior gets more cooperative when pairs are introduced to each other before the beginning of the game.     

Decomposing trust and trustworthiness

What motivates people to trust and be trustworthy? Is trust solely “calculative,” based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness only reciprocity? Employing a within-subject design, we run investment and dictator game experiments in Russia, South Africa and the United States. Additionally, we measured risk preferences and expectations of return. Expectations of return account for most of the variance in trust, but unconditional kindness also matters. Variance in trustworthiness is mainly accounted for by unconditional kindness, while reciprocity plays a comparatively small role. There exists some heterogeneity in motivation but people behave surprisingly similarly in the three countries studied.     

More gain,more give? The impact of brand community value on users’ value co-creation

Users' value co-creation behaviors contribute to the prosperity of brand communities as well as brand performance. This article aims to answer a basic question: are brand community users who obtain more value from the brand community more willing to co-create value? If so, why and under what conditions? Drawing from reciprocity theory, this study proposes that information value and social value lead to value co-creation by evoking users' reciprocity norm, and this effect depends on their self-presentation in the community. Results based on structural equation modeling combining survey data and archival data largely validate this framework, revealing that the reciprocity norm mediates the influence of brand community value on value co-creation. Additionally, information value increases value co-creation only when the level of self-presentation is high, and the positive effect of social value is not altered by self-presentation. By uncovering the mechanism and boundary conditions of how brand community value affects users’ value co-creation behaviors, this study extends the current literature on value co-creation and provides important practical implications.     

Rent-seeking versus productive activities in a multi-task experiment

Incentive instruments like asset ownership and performance pay often have to strike a balance between the productive incentives and the rent-seeking incentives they provide. Standard theory predicts that these instruments become less attractive when the effectiveness of rent-seeking activities increases. In contrast, theories that emphasize the importance of reciprocity suggest that this relationship may go the other way around. In this paper we test these predictions by means of a laboratory experiment. By and large our findings confirm standard theory. Incentive instruments typically become less attractive when the scope for rent-seeking activities increases. However, reciprocity motivations do seem to mitigate the adverse effects of rent-seeking opportunities to a considerable extent.     

对跨文化团队中信任问题的质性实证研究

文章以中德团队为例研究了跨文化团队内聚力发展中的要素之一——信任,探索了信任的特性、功能等及其与沟通、交互性等要素的相互作用,并揭示了中德员工信任理念的异同之处。在理论研究的基础上,文章提出了三个假设,然后,文章采用质性访谈的实证研究方法访谈了数十位中德员工,采用质性内容分析法对其中32个访谈进行了研究。文章描述了该分析结果对前期假设的验证,并总结出一些其他发现。     

Multilateral trade negotiations, bilateral opportunism and the rules of GATT/WTO

Trade negotiations occur through time and between the governments of many countries. An important issue is thus whether the value of concessions that a government wins in a current negotiation may be eroded in a future bilateral negotiation to which it is not party. We identify rules of negotiation that serve to protect the welfare of governments that are not participating in the bilateral negotiation. Our main finding is that the two central principles of GATT/WTO—nondiscrimination (MFN) and reciprocity—preserve the welfare of nonparticipating governments and therefore offer a “first-line of defense” against bilateral opportunism.