<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>A cohesive network keeps groups together and enables members to communicate about and cooperate for public goods. For ongoing cooperation, group members have to know if their group members cooperate or defect, but this information—mostly through gossip—is threatened by noise and biases. If there are redundant information channels, however, errors in monitoring and transmission in one imperfect channel can, to some degree, be corrected by information through another imperfect channel, and may lead to higher levels of cooperation. An influential conceptualization of social cohesion based on redundancy is K-connectivity: the minimum number (K) of node-independent paths connecting pairs of nodes in a group’s network. In a lab experiment, we tested if higher K-connectivity yields higher levels of cooperation for public goods, controlling for a number of other network effects such as density, size, and average distance. We do not find the hypothesized effect, which might be due to a not-earlier-found shortcoming of the concept, and we propose a solution.</p>
</abstract>

A cohesive network keeps groups together and enables members to communicate about and cooperate for public goods. For ongoing cooperation, group members have to know if their group members cooperate or defect, but this information—mostly through gossip—is threatened by noise and biases. If there are redundant information channels, however, errors in monitoring and transmission in one imperfect channel can, to some degree, be corrected by information through another imperfect channel, and may lead to higher levels of cooperation. An influential conceptualization of social cohesion based on redundancy is K-connectivity: the minimum number (K) of node-independent paths connecting pairs of nodes in a group’s network. In a lab experiment, we tested if higher K-connectivity yields higher levels of cooperation for public goods, controlling for a number of other network effects such as density, size, and average distance. We do not find the hypothesized effect, which might be due to a not-earlier-found shortcoming of the concept, and we propose a solution.

Social Cohesion and Cooperation for Public Goods

Connections

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A cohesive network keeps groups together and enables members to communicate about and cooperate for public goods. For ongoing cooperation, group members have...

Social Cohesion and Cooperation for Public Goods

Published Online: Feb 05, 2021

Page range: 1 - 6

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/connections-2019.020

Keywords
Public goods, Cooperation, Social cohesion, K-connectivity

© 2021 Jeroen Bruggeman et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Social Cohesion and Cooperation for Public Goods

Published Online: Feb 05, 2021

Page range: 1 - 6

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/connections-2019.020

KeywordsPublic goods, Cooperation, Social cohesion, K-connectivity

© 2021 Jeroen Bruggeman et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords
Public goods, Cooperation, Social cohesion, K-connectivity