Abstract

Trust is considered as an important determinant of cooperative and pro-social behavior: when interacting with trusted partners, people will have confidence in their willingness to engage in reciprocal cooperation, and will be cooperative in return. As a consequence, trust is particularly useful in public goods dilemmas situations, where the objective is to maximize individual contributions to the collective good. A previous series of studies (Felletti et al . 2017) has investigated the effects of trust on cooperative behavior in scenarios of natural risk prevention, highlighting how the possibility of reciprocation mediates the effects of trust. The purpose of the present study is to further investigate the conditions under which trust plays its most effective role in boosting cooperation in public good situations. In particular, it focuses on the effects of reputational mechanisms triggered by the presence of a third party who observes the interaction between the players in a public goods game with a natural risk scenario.