“When I see your face, your reputation looks better”: Effects of players' identity and reputation on cooperation in the public goods game

Players’ identity and their reputation are known to influence cooperation in economic games, but little is known about how they interact. Our study aimed to understand how presenting players’ identities (face photos; names) along with their previous cooperation history (reputation) could influence participants’ cooperative decisions in a public goods game. Participants (N= 759) were allocated to one of six experimental groups: (i) control (no information); (ii) only reputation (neutral, free-rider or cooperative); (iii) only face; (iv) face with reputation; (v) only name; (vi) name with reputation. In the reputation group, cooperation significantly decreased when free-riders were playing and significantly increased when they were neutral or cooperators. Person’s identity affected cooperativeness only with reputation: face photo mitigated the negative effect of the free-rider reputation; name identity mitigated any significant effect expected for reputation. Our study suggests a hierarchy: reputation changes cooperation, but a person's identity can modulate reputation.