Cross-cultural interactions and equilibrium selection in Stag Hunt games

We study within- and cross-culture interaction in a Stag Hunt game, using a controlled online experiment with participants from a Chinese and a U.S. university. We investigate if cross-culture interactions support less coordination on the riskier but Pareto efficient Nash equilibrium. Our study mimics the experimental design of previous studies testing this hypothesis, but includes participants from two geographically-separated universities instead of subgroups within a single western university thus providing a stronger delineation between two cultures. Counter to previous studies, we find that cross-culture interactions can have a positive impact on efficiency. Participants from the U.S. university, particularly females, more frequently selected the efficient but risky action when facing a counterpart from the Chinese university. Male participants of the Chinese university, instead, less frequently selected the efficient but risky action when facing counterparts from the U.S. university. These behavioral asymmetries do not support the hypothesis that multicultural interactions invariably have an adverse impact on efficiency.