Cooperative Attitudes Among Workers of Social Cooperatives: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment

We investigate cooperative attitudes among workers of nonprofit organizations by means of a novel empirical method combining experimental and survey data. Specifically, a two-player Prisoner's Dilemma game is attached to a nationwide survey of social cooperatives in Italy. We experimentally manipulate social proximity of those interacting in the Prisoner's Dilemma and the relative returns of mutual cooperation. We find that higher returns foster cooperation when social proximity of participants is low, while cooperation is not affected by a change in social proximity alone. Furthermore, social relations in the workplace and innate dispositional factors correlate with choices in the game. Our findings offer stimulating insights into the interplay between organizational features and workers' motivations