IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0337425.html

Inequality aversion and prosocial punishment: Evidence from a one-shot public goods game

Author

Listed:
  • Per F Andersson
  • Martina Testori
  • Sergio Lo Iacono

Abstract

The willingness to engage in costly punishment of free riders (prosocial punishment) is crucial to foster group cooperation and understand public goods provision. While prosocial punishment is common across societies, its motivations remain unclear. Scholars have suggested that people resist inequitable outcomes and willingly bear costs to sanction free riders, seeking a fairer distribution of payoffs. This study tests a key implication of such fairness-driven arguments: if inequality aversion drives prosocial punishment, individuals should punish less when redistribution occurs, as equality concerns would be already satisfied. We conducted a pre-registered 2x2 between-subjects lab experiment (N=320), where participants completed a Social Value Orientation (SVO) task and played a one-shot Public Goods Game (PGG) with a Punishment Stage. We manipulated endowment inequality and the presence of redistributive taxation. Pre-registered analyses show that (1) inequality aversion does not predict prosocial punishment; (2) punishment levels do not significantly differ across treatments. However, exploratory results suggest that under high inequality, redistribution reduces the intensity of punishment towards richer individuals. This could indicate that inequality aversion triggers prosocial punishment only at acute inequality levels.

Suggested Citation

  • Per F Andersson & Martina Testori & Sergio Lo Iacono, 2026. "Inequality aversion and prosocial punishment: Evidence from a one-shot public goods game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 21(1), pages 1-14, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0337425
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0337425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0337425
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0337425&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0337425?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Ivo Schurtenberger, 2018. "Normative foundations of human cooperation," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(7), pages 458-468, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:osf:socarx:hgznu_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Simon Gächter & Lucas Molleman & Daniele Nosenzo, 2025. "Why people follow rules," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 9(7), pages 1342-1354, July.
    3. De Geest, Lawrence R. & Kingsley, David C., 2021. "Norm enforcement with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 403-430.
    4. Hoffmann, Christin & Thommes, Kirsten, 2024. "Can leaders motivate employees’ energy-efficient behavior with thoughtful communication?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    5. Rezaei, Sarah & Rosenkranz, Stephanie & Weitzel, Utz & Westbrock, Bastian, 2024. "Social preferences on networks," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    6. Sanjit Dhami & Emma Manifold & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2018. "Prosociality, Political Identity, and Redistribution of Earned Income: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 7256, CESifo.
    7. Pawe{l} Niszczota & Tomasz Grzegorczyk & Alexander Pastukhov, 2025. "People Are Highly Cooperative with Large Language Models, Especially When Communication Is Possible or Following Human Interaction," Papers 2507.18639, arXiv.org.
    8. Sanjit Dhami & Emma Manifold & Ali al‐Nowaihi, 2021. "Identity and Redistribution: Theory and Evidence," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(350), pages 499-531, April.
    9. Traub, Stefan & Schwaninger, Manuel & Paetzel, Fabian & Neuhofer, Sabine, 2023. "Evidence on need-sensitive giving behavior: An experimental approach to the acknowledgment of needs," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    10. Yang, Luhe & Ning, Yongpeng & Zhang, Lianzhong, 2025. "Reconstruction of micro-dynamics characterizing human decision-making behavior in repeated social dilemmas," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 497(C).
    11. Arefin, Md. Rajib & Tanimoto, Jun, 2024. "Coupling injunctive social norms with evolutionary games," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 466(C).
    12. Renan Goetz & Jorge Marco, 2025. "Social networks, norm-enforcing ties and cooperation," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 20(2), pages 371-412, April.
    13. Kaba, Mustafa & Koyuncu, Murat & Schneider, Sebastian O. & Sutter, Matthias, 2024. "Social norms, political polarization, and vaccination attitudes: Evidence from a survey experiment in Turkey," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    14. Bicchieri, Cristina & Dimant, Eugen & Gächter, Simon & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2022. "Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 59-72.
    15. Ann-Christin Posten & Pınar Uğurlar & Sebastian Kube & Joris Lammers, 2024. "Maintaining Cooperation through Vertical Communication of Trust when Removing Sanctions," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 323, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    16. Cristina Bicchieri & Eugen Dimant, 2018. "It's Not A Lie If You Believe It. Lying and Belief Distortion Under Norm-Uncertainty," PPE Working Papers 0012, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    17. Davood Bayat & Hadi Mohamadpour & Huihua Fang & Pengfei Xu & Frank Krueger, 2023. "The Impact of Order Effects on the Framing of Trust and Reciprocity Behaviors," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-14, February.
    18. Cabrales, Antonio & García, Manu & Ramos Muñoz, David & Sánchez, Angel, 2025. "The interactions of social norms about climate change: Science, institutions and economics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    19. Burton-Chellew, Maxwell, 2022. "The restart effect in social dilemmas shows humans are self-interested not altruistic," SocArXiv hgznu, Center for Open Science.
    20. Dimant, Eugen, 2023. "Beyond average: A method for measuring the tightness, looseness, and polarization of social norms," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    21. Zhen Wang & Ruiqi Song & Chen Shen & Shiya Yin & Zhao Song & Balaraju Battu & Lei Shi & Danyang Jia & Talal Rahwan & Shuyue Hu, 2024. "Overcoming the Machine Penalty with Imperfectly Fair AI Agents," Papers 2410.03724, arXiv.org, revised May 2025.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0337425. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.