It’s a game of give and take: Modeling behavior in a give-or-take-some social dilemma

Abstract

We investigate a new give-or-take-some (GOTS) dilemma paradigm that merges traditional give-some and take-some dilemmas. In this hybrid social dilemma, individuals can choose to give or to take resources from a shared resource pool. Previous empirical work by McCarter, Budescu, and Scheffran (2011) found that the composition of the group and the individuals’ endowments influenced their tendency to give and/or take. We reanalyze results from two experiments from McCarter, Budescu, et al. (2011) using the new paradigm and propose a simple model of individual behavior based on the players’ perceptions of their relative standing in the group and their perception of fair allocations. We also use these data to fit the model at the individual level and use it to provide a general framework for interpreting the group results.