Search Results (26)

This cross-sectional study examined how children integrated social strategy and initial resource endowment when responding to others as third-party observers in a cooperative context. Using an age-appropriate collective dilemma game, 141 Chinese children observed fictional peers choosing among cooperation, self-reliance, and free-riding strategies under conditions of high or low resource endowment, yielding a 3 (strategy) × 2 (resource endowment) experimental design. Children responded to each target through punishment, social evaluation, and partner choice. Results showed a strong preference for high-resource individuals among younger children (ages 5–6), which diminished with age, suggesting a developmental shift away from reliance on external cues such as resource. Across all age groups, children consistently responded most negatively to free riders, regardless of resource endowment, indicating their moral sensitivity to exploitative intent and fairness violations. Importantly, self-reliant individuals with high resources were viewed more favorably than those with low resources, indicating that children adjust their responses based on social strategy and resource endowment. These findings suggest two key developmental patterns: (1) an age-related decline in resource-based preferences and (2) early-emerging ability that enables children to weigh contextual cues when responding to non-cooperative behaviors. The study highlights age-related patterns in children’s third-party responses, reflecting their sensitivity to both social strategy and situational information in cooperative contexts. Full article

Third-party punishment involves bystanders voluntarily incurring costs to punish norm violators, thereby maintaining social norms and cooperation. While prior research shows reduced punishment when the bystander and violator are friends, less is known about how the violator–victim relationship affects such punishment. Based on deterrence theory, punishment serves both to sanction violations and deter future threats. Accordingly, using the Dictator Game–third-party punishment paradigm across five experiments with a primary adult sample, this study investigated the impact of social relationships on third-party punishment, examined the mediating role of threat perception, and validated the applicability of deterrence theory within the context of third-party punishment. A pilot experiment confirmed that bystanders punish friends less than strangers. Experiment 1 showed that when the bystander and violator were friends, punishment was stronger if the violator and victim were also friends. Experiment 2 showed that congruent social relationships (e.g., all parties are friends) elicit greater punishment than incongruent ones. Experiment 3 demonstrated that threat perception mediates this effect: consistency increases threat perception, which in turn heightens punishment. In summary, consistency of social relationships increases third-party punishment, mediated by elevated threat perception. These findings support the use of deterrence theory in third-party punishment contexts and deepen our understanding of how social relationships shape punitive behavior. Full article

Driven by the rapid evolution of AI technology, compatible management mechanisms have become a systematic project involving the participation of multiple stakeholders. However, constrained by the rigidity and lag of traditional laws, the “one-size-fits-all” regulatory model will exacerbate the vulnerability of the complex system of AI governance, hinder the sustainable evolution of the AI ecosystem that relies on the dynamic balance between innovation and responsibility, and ultimately fall into the dilemma of “chaos when laissez-faire, stagnation when over-regulated”. To address this challenge, this study takes the multi-stakeholder collaborative mechanism co-established by governments, enterprises, and third-party technical audit institutions as its research object and centers on the issue of “strategic fluctuations” caused by key factor disturbances. From the perspective of the full life cycle of technological development, the study integrates the historical compliance performance of stakeholders and develops a nonlinear dynamic reward and punishment mechanism based on Credit Entropy. Through evolutionary game simulation, it further examines this mechanism as a realization path to promote the transformation from passive campaign-style AI supervision to agile governance of AI, which is characterized by rapid response and minimal intervention, thereby laying a foundation for the sustainable development of AI technology that aligns with long-term social well-being, resource efficiency, and inclusive growth. Finally, the study puts forward specific governance suggestions, such as setting access thresholds for third-party institutions and strengthening their independence and professionalism, to ensure that the iterative development of AI makes positive contributions to the sustainability of socio-technical systems. Full article

Facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness, and social interest influence two-person decision making. However, it remains unclear how these three factors jointly influence three-person bargaining. We investigated the impact of facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness, and social interest on fairness decisions in a three-person ultimatum game and a third-party punishment dictator game. The results of the ultimatum game showed that in the condition of positive social interest, the acceptance rate of unfair/fair offers was higher when third players had attractive faces or attractive voices. Attractive faces of third players also increased acceptance rates of unfair/unfair offers than unattractive faces when third players expressed negative social interest. In the third-party punishment game, participants rated unfair allocations from unattractive-voice proposers with attractive faces (compared to unattractive faces) and proposers who expressed negative social interest (compared to positive social interest) as more reasonable. Regarding the punishment intentions, among the three factors, both the effect of vocal attractiveness and social interest were modulated by the combinations of the other two factors, while the effect of facial attractiveness remains robust across all conditions. These findings suggest that fairness decisions in three-person bargaining games are affected by beauty premium and social interest, while these effects vary across different decision contexts. Full article

Since existing studies primarily explore green development measures from the static perspective of a single airport stakeholder, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model to analyze the strategic choices of three key stakeholders: airport authorities, third-party organizations, and government departments, based on evolutionary game theory. By solving the stable strategy of the tripartite evolution using the Jacobian matrix, the green transition of airport development can be divided into three stages: “initiation”, “development”, and “maturity”, allowing for the exploration of key factors influencing the green transition of airport development. A simulation analysis is conducted based on real Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport data. The results indicate that the tripartite evolutionary game strategy is stable at $E_4(0,0,1)$ and the green transition of Baiyun Airport remains in the development stage. By improving the reward and punishment mechanisms of government departments, the evolutionary game strategy can be stabilized at $E_8(1,1,1)$, promoting the green transition of airport development toward the mature stage. By adjusting the game parameters, the dynamic process of green transition in airports at different levels of development and under varying regulatory environments can be effectively captured, supporting the precise formulation of corresponding policies. Full article

Industrialization and increased energy use are leading to a greater influence of environmental and climate challenges on human existence and progress. China’s emissions in 2023 totaled 12.6 gigatons, representing 35% of global emissions, establishing it as the top carbon emitter globally. Combined with China’s industrial structure, it is essential to investigate carbon reduction in the building sector due to its significant contribution to carbon emissions. This study introduces a third-party organization into the relationship between stakeholders, based on traditional government regulation. It constructs a three-party dynamic evolution model involving the government, environmental protection organization, and construction enterprise. The study analyzes the evolution process of the three-party strategy selection using evolutionary game theory. We analyze the elements influencing decision-making for the three parties through simulation analysis and provide appropriate recommendations. The study’s findings indicate that low-carbon construction in China’s construction sector is an intricate system involving several stakeholders, each guided by their own interests when determining their behavioral methods. Government penalties and financial subsidies can influence construction enterprises to adopt low-carbon production practices to some degree, but excessive rewards and punishments may not support system stability. Full article

Although in everyday life decisions about losses are prevalent (e.g., the climate crisis and the COVID-19 crisis), there is hardly any research on decisions in the loss domain. Therefore, we conducted online experiments with a sample of 672 participants (mostly students), using third-party punishment dictator games (DGs) in the loss domain to explore the impact of losses and punishment threats on the conformity to the fairness norm. Subjects in the treatment condition have to divide a loss of −10 € with the threat of a third-party punishment with different strengths (control: gains, no punishment). Overall, the statistical evidence seems rather weak, but when it comes to losses, subjects are more rational and straightforward with their words and deeds than with gains. Therefore, in the loss domain, subjects are more likely to believe that the fairness norm should be followed, and they subjectively perceive that the others do as well. Furthermore, although dictators’ decisions are more selfish in the loss domain, dictators there react more strongly to the punishment threat by reducing their demands than in the gains domain. This holds as long as the punishment threat is strong enough, as judged from a rational perspective. Full article

Effective internal control of enterprises can increase their social responsibility by improving financial performance, forming a sustainable cycle of enterprise development. This article uses relevant data from Chinese listed companies to explore the relationship between internal control, financial performance, and corporate social responsibility, as well as the differences in the impact of internal control on corporate social responsibility under the heterogeneity of property rights. We found that the three have a good promoting effect on each other; at the same time, financial performance plays a part in the media effect in corporate internal control and corporate social responsibility, and this effect is stronger in non-state-owned holding enterprises than in state-owned holding enterprises. This article suggests the following: (1) establish an internal control system for socially responsible enterprises and internalize corporate responsibility awareness; (2) strengthen the internal control and independent third-party supervision systems and form a joint internal and external supervision pattern; and (3) improve the top-level design of social responsibility and combine incentive and punishment measures. This study provides constructive suggestions for the sustainable development of Chinese listed companies and future research directions. Full article

This study aims to provide useful insights for the Chinese government in dealing with healthcare fraud by creating an evolutionary game model that involves hospitals, third-party entities, and the government based on the government reward and punishment mechanism. This paper analyzes the evolutionary stability of each participant’s strategy choice, discusses the influence of each element on the tripartite strategy choice, and further analyzes the stability of the equilibrium point in the tripartite game system. The results show that (1) the government increasing fines on hospitals is conducive to compliant hospital operations, and the incentive mechanism has little effect on such operations; (2) the lack of an incentive mechanism for third parties results in false investigations by third parties; and (3) rewards from higher levels of government promote strict supervision by local governments, but that the high cost of supervision and rewards for hospitals inhibits the probability of strict supervision. Finally, Matlab 2020a is used for simulation analysis to provide a reference for the government to improve the supervision of healthcare fraud. Full article

Federated learning (FL) is a distributed machine learning framework that can effectively help multiple players to use data to train federated models while complying with their privacy, data security, and government regulations. Due to federated model training, an accurate model should be trained, and all federated players should actively participate. Therefore, it is crucial to design an incentive mechanism; however, there is a conflict between fairness and Pareto efficiency in the incentive mechanism. In this paper, we propose an incentive mechanism via the combination of the Shapley value and Pareto efficiency optimization, in which a third party is introduced to supervise the federated payoff allocation. If the payoff can reach Pareto optimality, the federated payoff is allocated by the Shapley value method; otherwise, the relevant federated players are punished. Numerical and simulation experiments show that the mechanism can achieve fair payoff allocation and Pareto optimality payoff allocation. The Nash equilibrium of this mechanism is formed when Pareto optimality payoff allocation is achieved. Full article

With the acceleration of Chinese industrialization, industrial wastewater is discharged in large quantities, leading to a groundwater environment with high ammonia nitrogen characteristics in many places, which seriously endangers people’s health and makes the treatment of ammonia nitrogen by enterprises an urgent issue. Therefore, based on the principle of “no-fault responsibility”, this paper combines China’s pollution trading rights policy and the reward and punishment distribution mechanism to provide a three-party governance model for groundwater ammonia nitrogen treatment under the benefit sharing of emissions trading. By constructing a tripartite evolutionary game model of groundwater ammonia nitrogen pollution treatment among sewage discharge enterprises, third-party governance enterprises and local governments, the role mechanisms of the strategic choices of different participating actors are analyzed. Finally, the validity of the model is verified via simulation, and the influence of key variables on the evolutionary stability of the system and the strategic choices of the participating parties under different situations are discussed. The research results show that setting reasonable reward and punishment allocation coefficients is the basis for promoting active pollution treatment among sewage discharge enterprises and third-party governance enterprises; a change in pollution rights trading revenue is a key factor affecting the strategic choices of the three parties; sewage discharge enterprises show stronger revenue sensitivity than third-party governance enterprises; and an environmental treatment credit system built by the government can effectively enhance the enthusiasm of enterprises to control pollution. Based on the research results of this paper, the participation of third-party governance enterprises in pollution rights trading is explored, which effectively promotes enterprises to actively carry out groundwater ammonia nitrogen treatment and provides a reference for the government to improve the construction of a sustainable development system for the water environment. Full article

The intergroup bias in third-party fairness maintenance includes two components: ingroup love and outgroup hate. Previous studies revealed that intergroup bias could be alleviated by high social identity complexity. This study explored the influence of the social identity complexity of parties in unfair events on intergroup bias in third-party fairness maintenance. Participants were divided into two groups and asked to choose from retention and punishment (Experiment One)/compensation (Experiment Two) to respond to unfair events presented by dictator games. To separate the components, we introduced additional unaffiliated members. Social identity complexity included single identity, presented as ingroup vs. outgroup sides of unfair events, and multiple identities, which included group identity and five additional identities. The results demonstrated that third parties tended to impose less punishment and more compensation on outgroup members under multiple than single identity conditions; however, the punishment and compensation to ingroup members exhibited no significant difference between the identity conditions. These results indicated that the multiple identities of the two sides in unfair events can reduce intergroup bias in third-party fairness maintenance, which can be achieved by reducing the outgroup hate rather than ingroup love. Full article

With the development of the digital economy, the algorithms and big data technologies of e-commerce platforms have gradually turned into double-edged swords. While realising personalised recommendations, they also provide information technology support for the use of algorithmic prices to discriminate and extract residual value from consumers. Consumers frequently use Black Cat and third-party media to complain, resulting in a significant negative impact. Therefore, in order to regulate algorithmic price discrimination, using e-commerce platforms, local governments and consumers act as game subjects, taking an evolutionary game approach. We analyse the impact of different situations and factors on the system’s evolutionary stability strategy and conduct its verification via simulation experiments. This study shows that several measures, such as increasing cooperation with the media; establishing clear regulatory rules to reduce the extent of algorithmic price discrimination and the grey revenue of e-commerce platforms; establishing a long-term mechanism for consumer feedback; improving rewards and punishments to increase the probability of successful regulation and penalties by local governments; sharing information to reduce the cost of consumer regulation; and setting reasonable bonus thresholds based on government revenue and consumer regulation costs, can effectively regulate algorithmic price discrimination and promote the sustainable development of e-commerce platforms. Full article

The heavy metal pollution of cultivated land in China is severe, requiring remediation. Introducing third-party governance subjects representing market resources is inevitable to realize the specialization and socialization of cultivated land remediation. However, due to the public nature of cultivated land, the confusion about participating parties’ responsibilities and difficulty coordinating interests restrict the expected effect of cultivated land remediation. To this end, a three-party evolutionary game model among the grassroots government, governance enterprises, and supervisory enterprises is constructed and virtually simulated, taking into account the influence of random checks by the higher-level government. We found that the reward and punishment mechanism of the grassroots government, the frequency of random inspection by the higher-level government, and the amount of deduction will influence the strategy selection of the participating parties. Strengthening the awareness of the responsibility of the grassroots government, optimizing the incentive system, establishing a regular spot-check system, and improving the cost of non-compliance by enterprises can effectively resolve conflicts of interest among the participants. The study results have practical significance for further enhancing the remediation efficiency of heavy metal-contaminated cultivated land. Full article

Decision-making under time pressure may better reflect an individual’s response preference, but few studies have examined whether individuals choose to be more selfish or altruistic in a scenario where third-party punishment is essential for maintaining social norms. This study used a third-party punishment paradigm to investigate how time pressure impacts on individuals’ maintenance of behavior that follows social norms. Thirty-one participants observed a Dictator Game and had to decide whether to punish someone who made what was categorized as a high unfair offer by spending their own Monetary units to reduce that person’s payoff. The experiment was conducted across different offer conditions. The study results demonstrated that reaction times were faster under time pressure compared with no time pressure. Time pressure was also correlated with less severe punishment. Specifically, participants were less likely to punish the dictator under time pressure compared with no time pressure when the offer was categorized as a high unfair. The findings suggested that individuals in these game conditions and under time pressure do not overcome their pro-selves and that time pressure weakens an individual’s willingness to punish high unfair offers. Full article