Globalisation and Propensity To Co-operate: Results From Multi-country Field Experiments

1. Globalisation and Propensity To Co-operate: Results From Multi-country Field Experiments Gianluca Grimalda CSGR – Warwick University Joint with Nancy Buchan (South Carolina), Marilynn Brewer (Ohio), Enrique Fatas (Valencia), Margaret Foddy (Carleton), Rick Wilson (Rice)

2. Motivation: Globalisation as a New Form of Connectivity • Previous research shows the importance of the structure and scale of individual connectivity on individual behaviour: • Henrich et al. (2004) show that the level of a society’s market integration in small-scale societies is positively related with pro-social experimental behaviour. • The social capital literature emphasises the importance of individual engagement in associations for the development of propensity to co-operate and civic-minded attitudes (Putnam, 1993). • This research looks at individual globalisation as a new form of connectivity, and at its influence on co-operative behaviour.

3. What do we Mean by Globalisation? • Globalisation may be conceptualised as the ‘de-territorialisation of human relations’ (Scholte, 2005; Robertson, 1992; Giddens, 1991). It leads to the creation of a network of relations among people on a global scale. • In accordance to the literature, such relations encompass the economic, social, cultural, and political sphere. • Individual globalisation is measured in this research as the extent to which an individual has access to this network and participates in it, that is, the extent of her ‘connectedness’ with other people on a (potentially) global scale. • Country-level globalisation is measured by the CSGR index.

4. Research strategy • 6 countries spanning the globalisation spectrum: United States (Columbus, Ohio), Italy (Milan), Russia (Tatarastan), Argentina (Buenos Aires), South Africa (Johannesburg), Iran (Tehran) • Standard methodological controls for comparative research have been adopted (Roth, et al., 1991; Buchan, and Croson, 2006) • Sample of around 200 people in each country stratified according to age, gender, and socio-economic status, equivalent across countries • Strategy: (a) To Measure the Individual Propensity to Co-operate at the local, national, and international level through 3 experimental decisions; (b) To measure the individual degree of globalisation through responses to a questionnaire

5. Experimental Protocol • Decision 1: Public Goods Game (PGG) at the LOCAL level • Decision 2: Nested PGG at the LOCAL/NATIONAL level • Decision 3: Nested PGG at the LOCAL/GLOBAL level • All decisions were independent and payoffs were not communicated until the end of the three decisions • People were randomly matched with people from their own local area, other areas in their country, and other countries • An individual index of globalisation has been derived from the scores to around 70 items included in a questionnaire that people completed at the end of the experimental decisions. Items measure the frequency and the scale of connectedness of an individual across the social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions.

6. An Example from the Questionnaire

7. Overview of the Results: Mean Co-operation Rates per Decision • Significant differences across countries • More globalised countries seem to experience a higher level of mean co-operation • Cooperation in Decision 3 is significantly lower than in Decision 2. This is the case (a) pooling all observations together (p-value= 0.0082); In Argentina (p-value=0.0144), the US (p-value= 0.0657), and South Africa (p-value=0.0220).

8. Regressions on Total Co-operation Rates in Decision 3 • Strong Predictive Power of Country-Level and Individual Level Globalisation on Total Co-operation in Decision 3 • Positive Relation

9. Regressions on Total Co-operation Rates in Decisions 2 and 1 • Again, strong positive relation between globalisation (macro and micro) on co-operation rates

10. Conclusions and Further Analysis • Significant Macro and Micro effects of globalisation, going hand-in-hand • Mediating effect of social identity? • What are the relations with social capital and generalised trust?

11. Local Group 2 from Country B Local group 1 from Country A Local group 3 from Country C I Appendix: The nested PGG World Group .

12. Appendix: Relation Between Globalisation Index and Mean Propensity to Co-operate

13. Appendix: Co-Operation Rates with the Higher-Order Group per Decision

14. Appendix: Relation Between Globalisation Index and Propensity to Co-operate with the Higher-Level Group