Economics · Level 3 · Advanced
Short- & long-term effects of monetary and non-monetary incentives to cooperate in public good games: An experiment
Lefebvre M, Stenger A (2020). PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227360 · CC BY 4.0
Step 1 of 2Read the paper
Do rewards and punishments keep people cooperating after they are switched off? In a lab in France, 200 students played a 30-round group investment game for real money. For the first 15 rounds some groups could punish or reward each other with money or with costless points of approval or disapproval; then the tools were removed and contributions were tracked.
How to read it
- Work through the payoff formula in Experimental design until you see why keeping tokens pays individually.
- Table 1 shows the five conditions; Table 2 is the key results table, so compare each row to the Baseline.
- Read "Periods 1–15 vs. periods 16–30" carefully: it weakens one of the headline claims.
- Treat Table 4 and Fig 3 as correlational evidence and ask what else could explain them.
Step 2 of 2Take the test
15 questions · about 50 minutes including reading · pick an answer to see straight away if it’s right. Nothing is saved.
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Paper: Lefebvre M, Stenger A, PLOS ONE (2020), licensed CC BY 4.0. Summary and questions are Research Nest’s own; read the original for the full study.