Cooperation in a common pool resource game: Strategic behavior and a sense of intimacy

Abstract

This study experimentally investigates two possible reasons for cooperative investment decisions in common pool resource games with two players. One reason is strategic behavior: subjects, who are allowed to interact with their partners repeatedly, attempt to build a long-term relationship and elicit cooperation from their partners. Another reason is a sense of intimacy: as the pairings of subjects are fixed throughout the experiment, subjects develop a sense of intimacy with their partners and make decisions by considering their benefit. The results suggest that cooperative decisions can be explained almost solely by subjects’ strategic behaviors; however, the hypothesis that a sense of intimacy governed cooperative investment was not supported.