(August 26, 2015) Targeted punishments could provide a path to international
climate change cooperation, new research in game theory has found.
Conducted at the University of Warwick, the research
suggests that in situations such as climate change, where everyone would be
better off if everyone cooperated but it may not be individually advantageous
to do so, the use of a strategy called 'targeted punishment' could help shift
society towards global cooperation.
Despite the name, the ‘targeted punishment’ mechanism can
apply to positive or negative incentives. The research argues that the key factor
is that these incentives are not necessarily applied to everyone who may seem
to deserve them. Rather, rules should be devised according to which only a
small number of players are considered responsible at any one time.
The study’s author Dr Samuel Johnson, from the University of
Warwick’s Mathematics Institute, explains:
"It is well known that some form of punishment, or
positive incentives, can help maintain cooperation in situations where almost
everyone is already cooperating, such as in a country with very little crime.
But when there are only a few people cooperating and many more not doing so
punishment can be too dilute to have any effect. In this regard, the
international community is a bit like a failed state."
The paper, published in Royal Society Open Science and
freely accessible online, shows that in situations of entrenched defection
(non-cooperation), there exist strategies of 'targeted punishment' available to
would-be punishers which can allow them to move a community towards global
cooperation.