Abstract Cooperatives as can be presumed to rely on the economic cooperation of their members. However, game-theoretic and institutional models suggest that cooperatives may be inherently fragile due to the individual costs of cooperation. Because of this it is widely believed that organizations which rely less on cooperation may be more stable, while organizations that require cooperation may be at higher risk of folding. Therefore, if cooperatively owned or managed businesses do in fact require higher levels of prosocial and cooperative behavior than hierarchically managed firms, they must attract and maintain cooperation among participants in order to function. We hypothesized that successful consumer food cooperatives will exhibit greater generalized cooperation than conventional grocery stores. We employed an experimental dictator game to measure altruistic cooperation among consumers at a food cooperative and a comparable conventional grocery. Cooperative customers exhibit a higher base rate of cooperation than similar conventional shoppers, and this relationship holds even when taking demographic factors such as income, education, and age into account. We conclude that, when successful, consumer cooperatives exhibit greater levels of cooperation than comparable traditional businesses.

中文翻译：

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合作社表现出比可比企业更大的行为合作：实验证据

摘要合作社可以推定为依赖其成员的经济合作。但是，博弈论和制度模型表明，由于个人的合作成本，合作社可能固有地脆弱。因此，人们普遍认为，较少依赖合作的组织可能会更稳定，而需要合作的组织则可能面临更大的折叠风险。因此，如果事实上合作拥有或管理的企业确实比等级管理的企业需要更高级别的亲社会和合作行为，则它们必须吸引并维持参与者之间的合作才能运作。我们假设成功的消费者食品合作社将比传统的杂货店展现出更大的广义合作。我们使用了一个实验性的独裁者游戏来衡量一家食品合作社和一家类似的传统杂货店的消费者之间的利他合作。合作客户比类似的传统购物者展现出更高的合作基础率，即使在考虑诸如收入，教育程度和年龄等人口因素时，这种关系仍然成立。我们得出的结论是，与其他传统企业相比，成功的消费者合作社表现出更高的合作水平。