Non-trivial reputation effects on social decision making in virtual environment

TL;DR

This study investigates how reputation influences cooperation and information-sharing behaviors in virtual social dilemmas, revealing both its prosocial effects and potential distortions.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the complex role of reputation in virtual environments, especially regarding informational behaviors and cooperation dynamics.

Findings

Reputation activates prosocial conduct in virtual settings.

Reputation can create limitations and distortions in social decision making.

Reputation influences cooperation but has nuanced effects.

Abstract

Reputation systems are currently used, often with success, to ensure the functioning of online services as well as of e-commerce sites. Despite the relationship between reputation and material cooperative behaviours is quite supported, less obvious appears the relationship with informative behaviours, which are crucial for the transmission of reputational information and therefore for the maintenance of cooperation among individuals. The purpose of this study was to verify how reputation affects cooperation dynamics in virtual environment, within a social dilemma situation (i.e., where there are incentives to act selfishly). The results confirm that reputation can activate prosocial conducts, however it highlights also the limitations and distortions that reputation can create.