Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
多委托人-单一代理人互动中的互惠性：实验证据
Reciprocity in multiple principals – one agent interactions: experimental evidence
摘要
Agents frequently engage with multiple principals simultaneously – for example, when borrowing from several banks or peers. In such settings, principals typically possess less information about the agent’s ability or intentions (e.g., to repay a loan) and must rely on trust. This paper presents experimental evidence from trust games framed in a credit market context to examine the role of reciprocity in interactions involving multiple principals (lenders) and a single agent (borrower). Agents were asked to decide whether to act trustworthily and repay, or to default and act selfishly, after receiving the same credit amount from either one or multiple principals. The results show that reciprocity declines when the number of trusting principals increases. A key mechanism appears to be the reduced marginal harm that an agent’s default imposes on each individual principal. Additionally, agents seem less sensitive to the negative consequences of their actions when multiple principals are affected. These findings suggest that interactions involving multiple principals are behaviorally riskier than bilateral ones. The results have implications for the design of incentive structures in multi-principal-agent environments, such as crowdlending platforms.
中文摘要
代理人经常同时与多个委托人互动——例如，向多家银行或同伴借款时。在此类情境中，委托人通常对代理人的能力或意图（如偿还贷款）掌握较少信息，因而必须依赖信任。本文通过在信贷市场背景下设计的信任博弈实验，考察了涉及多个委托人（贷款人）与单一代理人（借款人）的互动中互惠性的作用。代理人从单个或多个委托人处获得相同信贷额度后，需决定是履行可信赖行为（偿还贷款）还是违约（采取自私行为）。结果表明，当信任代理人的委托人数量增加时，互惠性会下降。其关键机制似乎是代理人违约对每个委托人造成的边际损害降低。此外，当多个委托人受到影响时，代理人对其行为的负面后果似乎更不敏感。这些发现表明，涉及多个委托人的互动在行为层面比双边互动更具风险性。研究结果对多委托人-代理人环境（如众贷平台）中的激励机制设计具有启示意义。