Three essays on indirect reciprocity: The importance of reputation

Marietta Leina, Andrea (2024) Three essays on indirect reciprocity: The importance of reputation. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Cooperation among individuals is fundamental to societies and economies. This thesis comprises three essays exploring how indirect reciprocity can sustain cooperation in large populations with heterogeneous helping costs.

In the first essay, I generalise the Helping Game by introducing heterogeneity in individuals’ helping costs. I investigate whether self-interested strategies can sustain indirect reciprocity in such a population. The findings suggest that, under certain parameters, cooperation can be an equilibrium even when helping costs vary.

The second essay experimentally compares two reputation-based mechanisms: “Image Scoring” (IS) and “Good Standing” (GS). IS was proposed by Nowak and Sigmund (1998) and tested by Engelmann and Fischbacher (2009); GS was introduced by Sugden (1986) and modified by Leimar and Hammerstein (2001). By adjusting participant information and introducing heterogeneous helping costs, I examine which mechanism more effectively fosters cooperation and reciprocity. The results indicate that while IS leads to higher overall cooperation, particularly in homogeneous cost settings, Hammerstein’s version of GS better supports reciprocal helping by facilitating cooperative “clubs” among individuals with lower costs.

In the third essay, I experimentally test two new mechanisms: a binary version of IS to align structurally with GS and the Sugden’s stricter version of GS. Additionally, I include a control condition without reputational information and elicit participants’ beliefs using a novel, incentive-compatible method expressing beliefs as frequencies. The essay also contributes theoretically by developing an axiomatic framework for binary reputation mechanisms, identifying principles that effective mechanisms should satisfy. The findings suggest that Sugden’s GS is most effective in sustaining reciprocal cooperation and that participants’ beliefs significantly influence the functioning of reputation mechanisms.

Collectively, these essays advance our understanding of how indirect reciprocity and reputation mechanisms can sustain cooperation in heterogeneous populations. They highlight the importance of designing systems that account for variations in helping costs.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	05 Jun 2025 07:37
Last Modified:	05 Jun 2025 08:19
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99399
DOI:

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