The Role Of Monetary Punishment And Moral Condemnation Mechanisms On Establishment Of Public Cooperation Order

Purpose: A good public cooperation order has a important significance to social harmony andsustainable development. Although the monetary punishment mechanism is considered to raisecooperation level and promote the establishment of public cooperation order effectively by manyresearchers. But due to the negative impact of such mechanisms, how to better play its role onthe establishment of public cooperation order also requires researchers to further explore.Compared with the monetary punishment, moral norms which are rely o n people to consciouslyabide, because of not cause loss of income directly to social norm violators, it seems to be moreeasily used and accepted by people, can also avoid the negative impact of monetary punishmentmechanism to some degree and become a more effective mechanism to promote establishment ofpublic cooperation order. Therefore，this study attempt to use a new moral condemnationmechanism and combine with different mechanism users to investigate and compare the role ofmonetary punishment and moral condemnation mechanisms on establishing public cooperationorder.Methods: This study used repeat public good game as a basic experiment framework. The studycomposed of three parts. Part one investigated the role of second party monetary punishment andmoral condemnation mechanisms on establishing public cooperation order. It contained a total offour different treatments: baseline group, monetary punishment group, moral condemnationgroup, combined with moral condemnation and monetary punishment group. We investigatedand compared the cooperation level, payoff and behaviors of monetary punishment and moralcondemnation in these treatments respectively. Part two investigated the role of third partymonetary punishment and moral condemnation mechanisms o n establishing public cooperationorder. It contained a total of three different treatments: monetary punishment group, moralcondemnation group, combined with moral condemnation and monetary punishment group. Wealso investigated and compared the cooperation level, payoff and behaviors of monetarypunishment and moral condemnation in these treatments respectively. Part three is based on part one and part two. It compared the role on establishing public cooperation order when the secondparty or third party using a same mechanism, mainly compared differences on cooperation levelcooperation under these mechanisms.Results:(1) Effects of moral condemnation on raising cooperation level were not completelybetter than monetary punishment. The effect of moral condemnation was better than monetarypunishment mechanism only when second party implemented.(2) Although the effect of raisingcooperation level is best when combined with moral condemnation and monetary punishmentmechanism implemented by third party. But there was no significant difference when comparedwith moral condemnation mechanism implemented by second party.(3) The effect of third partyimplementation was not completely better than second party. When moral condemnationmechanism was implemented by second party, the improvement of cooperation level was higherthan when it was implemented by third party.(4) On the payoff, When second party implementedmechanisms, although the payoff of mechanisms were not significantly higher than those ofbaseline group on the overall, but the payoff still showed a clear upward trend. At the late stageof establishing cooperation order，the payoff under these mechanisms were significantly higherthan those of baseline group. When third party implemented mechanisms, the payoff of moralcondemnation mechanism and combine with moral condemnation and monetary punishmentmechanism were respectively significantly higher than those of baseline group. Although thepayoff of monetary punishment and baseline group had no significant difference in general. Thepayoff of monetary punishment still showed a rising trend. At the late stage of establishingcooperation order, the payoff of monetary punishment was significantly higher than those ofbaseline group.(5) Even it did not reduce social norm violators’payoff，people were still willingto spend their cost on implementing moral condemnation.Conclusion:(1) Compare with the absence of any constraint mechanism, monetary punishmentand moral condemnation mechanisms can enhance the cooperation level of people and promoteestablishing public cooperation order.(2) When participants of establishing cooperation orderhave a direct economic interest relationship with evaluators, participants are more sensitive tomoral evaluation, so moral condemnation mechanism play a better role on promotion of cooperation order than monetary punishment mechanism. When participants face moralcondemnation and monetary punishment at the same time, the contradiction between "morality"and "profit" may lead participants to have fluctuations in emotion, thus affecting theimprovement of cooperation level.(3) When participants of establishing cooperation order haveno direct economic interest relationship with evaluators, participants are more depend onevaluators’ feedback and more sensitive to monetary punishment, so the effect of combine withmoral condemnation and monetary punishment mechanism on establishing cooperation order isbest, and the effect of monetary punishment is better than monetary punishment mechanism.(4)When the evaluation mechanism will reduce participants’ payoff, the participants are morewilling to believe and accept evaluation behavior of third party. It makes third party’s effectbetter than second party. When the evaluation mechanism will not reduce participants’ payoffand only evaluate participants on moral norms, the effect of second party is better than thirdparty because of the externality of third party evaluation, far psychological distance forparticipants and other reasons.(5) At the initial stage of establishing cooperation order, theimplementation of constraint mechanism may bring certain cost loss. But when these constraintmechanisms operate effectively, the maintenance of public cooperation order will let people getmore profits.(6) People in deciding whether to spend their own costs on evaluating a social normviolators, reducingsocial norm violators’payoff is not one of the factors theyconsider.