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Analysis of institutional authors

Pereda, MariaAuthor

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June 9, 2019
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Group size size effects and critical mass in public goods games

Publicated to: Scientific Reports. 9 (5503): 5503- - 2019-12-01 9(5503), DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-41988-3

Authors:

Pereda, Maria; Capraro, Valerio; Sanchez, Angel
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Affiliations

Middlesex Univ London, Business Sch, Econ Dept, London NW4 4BT, England - Author
UC3M UV UZ, UMICC S, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Carlos III Madrid, Grp Interdisciplinar Sistemas Complejos, Dept Matemat, Madrid 28911, Spain - Author
Univ Carlos III Madrid, Inst UC3M BS Financial Big Data IBiDat, Madrid 28903, Spain - Author
Univ Politecn Madrid, Dept Ingn Org Adm Empresas & Estadist, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Zaragoza, Inst Biocomputat & Phys Complex Syst BIFI, Zaragoza 50018, Spain - Author
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Abstract

Understanding whether the size of the interacting group has an effect on cooperative behavior has been a major topic of debate since the seminal works on cooperation in the 1960s. Half a century later, scholars have yet to reach a consensus, with some arguing that cooperation is harder in larger groups, while others that cooperation is easier in larger groups, and yet others that cooperation attains its maximum in intermediate size groups. Here we add to this field of work by reporting a two-treatment empirical study where subjects play a Public Goods Game with a Critical Mass, such that the return for full cooperation increases linearly for early contributions and then stabilizes after a critical mass is reached (the two treatments differ only on the critical mass). We choose this game for two reasons: it has been argued that it approximates real-life social dilemmas; previous work suggests that, in this case, group size might have an inverted-U effect on cooperation, where the pick of cooperation is reached around the critical mass. Our main innovation with respect to previous experiments is that we implement a within-subject design, such that the same subject plays in groups of different size (from 5 to 40 subjects). Groups are formed at random at every round and there is no feedback. This allows us to explore if and how subjects change their choice as a function of the size of the group. We report three main results, which partially contrast what has been suggested by previous work: in our setting (i) the critical mass has no effect on cooperation; (ii) group size has a positive effect on cooperation; (iii) the most chosen option (played by about 50% of the subjects) is All Defection, followed by All Cooperation (about 10% of the subjects), whereas the rest have a slight trend to switch preferentially from defection to cooperation as the group size increases.
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Keywords

AltruismCollective actionCommonsCooperationCooperative behaviorDilemmaEmpirical researchFemaleGame theoryGender-differencesGroup processesHumansMaleModels, psychologicalParadoxProvisionSample size

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2019, it was in position 17/71, thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Multidisciplinary Sciences.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations provided by WoS (ESI, Clarivate), it yields a value for the citation normalization relative to the expected citation rate of: 1.18. This indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 13, 2025)

This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:

  • Weighted Average of Normalized Impact by the Scopus agency: 1.23 (source consulted: FECYT Mar 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-12-22, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 29
  • Scopus: 41
  • Europe PMC: 4
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Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-12-22:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 58.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 59 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 1.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 1 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
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Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: United Kingdom.

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (PEREDA GARCIA, MARIA) .

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Awards linked to the item

This work was partially supported by MINECO/FEDER (Spain) through grant FIS2015-64349-P VARIANCE (AS) and by the EU through FET Open Project IBSEN (contract no. 662725, AS).
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