Coordination/Cooperation Games

Diverse motivations and underlying institutions influence coordination or cooperation behaviors, such as giving, volunteering, pro-environmental behaviors, or helping behaviors at work or home, etc. Both payoff maximizers and people with social preferences coordinate or cooperate with others. Selfish people cooperate or coordinate with others for long-term relationships, and people with social preferences find value in the prosocial behaviors, themselves. Cognitive abilities and repertoires of heuristics affect the strategic choices of selfish people. Various social preferences, such as pure/impure altruism, reciprocity, fairness concerns, and so on, underlie the cooperation/coordination behaviors. Thus, it is important to consider the cognitive abilities and social preferences when designing incentives, communication channels, information provision, or nudges, the mechanisms that encourage coordination or cooperation.

This research topic aims to collect studies related to coordination or cooperation behavior. We broadly welcome studies that contribute to the identification of strategies, preferences, personalities, psychological characters, cognitive abilities, or heuristics underlying coordination or cooperation behavior, as well as those that contribute to the design of institutions, rules, or mechanisms that encourage coordination or cooperation behavior.

This special issue welcomes studies, such as the laboratory and field experiments, questionnaire studies, or theoretical studies, on coordination or cooperation behavior. We encourage interdisciplinary submissions. Potential themes include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Theoretical and experimental studies investigating the types of strategies that support coordination or cooperation in repeated games
- Theoretical and experimental studies of equilibrium selection
- Experimental studies investigating the relationship between coordination or cooperation behavior and cognitive abilities, social preferences, or psychological characteristics
- Field experimental studies on the effects of nudges that promote the coordination or cooperation behavior.
- Questionnaire studies on the relationship between coordination or cooperation behavior, and psychological and sociodemographic characters.
- Theoretical and experimental studies of mechanism design to implement coordination or cooperation

For example, this research topic will cover papers in the following areas.

- Dal Bó, P., & Fréchette, G. R. (2019). Strategy choice in the infinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma. American Economic Review, 109(11), 3929-3952.
- Capraro, V., Jordan, J. J., & Rand, D. G. (2014). Heuristics guide the implementation of social preferences in one-shot Prisoner's Dilemma experiments. Scientific reports, 4(1), 6790.
- Thomas, K. A., DeScioli, P., Haque, O. S., & Pinker, S. (2014). The psychology of coordination and common knowledge. Journal of personality and social psychology, 107(4), 657.