One Step at a Time : Does Gradualism Foster Group Coordination ?

This study is based on a framed field experiment conducted in China and the study examines how the pattern of varying threshold levels influences group coordination at high-threshold levels. Of primary interest in varying the threshold level successively is the role of gradualism. We define gradualism as the hypothesis that proposes that allowing agents to coordinate first on small and easy-to-achieve goals and then increasing the level of goals slowly over the course of a game facilitates subsequent coordination on otherwise hard-to-achieve outcomes. We find that successful coordination at a high-stakes level in the Gradualism treatment group was very high. Our findings suggest that for a group to establish successful coordination at a high level, it is better to begin at a low-stake level and, equally important, to increase the stake level slowly. The paper sheds light on how to foster group coordination in a context where it is not clear how to structure incentives for individual players. * Joint with Sam Asher (Oxford) and Maoliang Ye (Harvard). We would like to thank Alberto Alesina, Jim Alt, Nejat Anbarci, Abhijit Banerjee, Max Bazerman, Iris Bohnet, Hannah Bowles, David Canning, Gary Charness, Raj Chetty, David Cutler, Sreedhari Desai, Ernst Fehr, Daniel Friedman, John Friedman, Roland Fryer, Francis Fukuyama, Edward Glaeser, Francesca Gino, Torben Iversen, Garett Jones, Yuichiro Kamada, Lawrence Katz, Judd Kessler, David Laibson, David Lam, Randall Lewis, Jeffrey Liebman, Jaimie Lien, Erzo F. P. Luttmer, Brigitte Madrian, Juanjuan Meng, Louis Putterman, Alvin Roth, Jason Shachat, Kenneth Shepsle, Andrei Shleifer, Monica Singhal, James Snyder, Dustin Tingley, Yan Yu, Tristan Zajonc, Richard Zeckhauser, Yao Zeng. I have been financially supported by the following sources: The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in the Economics Program under Grant No. 1227274, The Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Studies and The CEPR AMID Marie Curie Initial Training Network Grant.