RT Journal Article
T1 Assessing the effects of pandemic risk on cooperation and social norms using a before-after Covid-19 comparison in two long-term experiments
A1 Vriens, Eva
A1 Szekely, Aron
A1 Lipari, Francesca
A1 Antonioni, Alberto
A1 Sánchez, Angel
A1 Tummolini, Luca
A1 Andrighetto, Giulia
AB How does threat from disease shape our cooperative actions and the social norms that guide such behaviour? To study these questions, we draw on a collective-risk social dilemma experiment that we ran before the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic (Wave 1, 2018) and compare this to its exact replication, sampling from the same population, that we conducted during the first wave of the pandemic (Wave 2, 2020). Tightness-looseness theory predicts and evidence generally supports that both cooperation and accompanying social norms should increase, yet, we mostly did not find this. Contributions, the probability of reaching the threshold (cooperation), and the contents of the social norm (how much people should contribute) remained similar across the waves, although the strength of these social norms were slightly greater in Wave 2. We also study whether the results from Wave 1 that should not be affected by the pandemic—the relationship between social norms and cooperation and specific behavioural types—replicate in Wave 2 and find that these results generally hold. Overall, our work demonstrates that social norms are important drivers of cooperation, yet, communicable diseases, at least in the short term, have little or no effects on either.
PB Springer Nature
SN 2045-2322
YR 2024
FD 2024-02-09
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/111075
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/111075
LA eng
NO Vriens, E., Szekely, A., Lipari, F. et al. Assessing the effects of pandemic risk on cooperation and social norms using a before-after Covid-19 comparison in two long-term experiments. Sci Rep 14, 3356 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-53427-z
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO Comunidad de Madrid
NO Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (Italia)
NO Vetenskapsrådet
DS Docta Complutense
RD 10 abr 2025