文化差异与个体选择:一个基于中美样本的实验研究

Culture Differences and Individual Choice:An Empirical Study Based on Game Theory

通过一个公共物品自愿供给实验和最后通牒实验,研究了不同文化背景下被试的行为差异以及文化差异在个体决策中所起的作用。实验结果显示:中美两国被试在实验中的行为有系统性的差异:在公共物品实验中,美国被试相对中国被试表现出更强的合作倾向;在最后通牒实验中,虽然美国被试作为提议者时的出价相对于中国被试并无太大差别,但是作为回应者时其拒绝行为更多。这一结果表明:美国参与者对自身收益低于他人时的忍受程度低于中国被试,而中国被试对制裁机制的存在与否表现出更大的敏感性。实验结果证实:行为差异确实在不同文化的被试中存在,即使他们的实验环境几乎完全一样。

Through the public good game and the ultimatum game,this thesis studies different behaviors of experiment participants from diverse cultural backgrounds and the role cultural dif-ferences play in individual decision.The experiments conducted in this paper show systematic differences in American and Chinese experiment participants’ behaviors：in the public good game,compared with Chinese subjects,American participants express more willingness for cooperation;in the ultimatum game,although as proposers American subjects do not make significantly different offers from Chinese subjects,American subjects reject more frequently as responders.The result implies that American participants are less tolerant than Chinese partici-pants when they get incomes lower than others,while the latter group behaves more sensitively to the existence of sanctioning system.Experimental results prove that behavioral differences do exist in experiment participants from different cultures,even if under almost the same experi-ment environment.