How peer monitoring and punishment affect the performance of the group contract: An experimental study on the control of non-point source pollution
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of three types of peer monitoring and punishment tools on the performance of a group contract for the control of agricultural non-point source pollution (ANPSP) in China.
Design/methodology/approach
Experimental economics.
Findings
All the three tools result in efficiency improvement and show little difference in performance. In addition, they break the theoretical Nash equilibrium of the team entry auction and help to better reveal bidders’ private cost information.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this study can be the first laboratory experiment study in the area of ANPSP in China and might provide some beneficial lessons for China’s policy-makers.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Conflicts of interest: the authors declare no conflict of interest.
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71473222), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2012BAD15804-2), the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 14ZDA070) and the State Scholarship Fund of China (201506320127). The paper was also completed with support from the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University, USA. The authors would like to thank Robert S. Chen and Greg Yetman of CIESIN, and Kent Messer and Tongzhe Li of University of Delaware for their help in the preparation of this paper. The authors would also like to thank reviewers for their constructive comments.
Citation
Wu, D., Chen, Y., Zhang, W. and Xing, X. (2018), "How peer monitoring and punishment affect the performance of the group contract: An experimental study on the control of non-point source pollution", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 119-134. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-08-2016-0125
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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