Rice Farming and the Emergence of Cooperative Behavior

This paper explores the origins of observed differences in cooperativeness across societies and cultures. In particular, we provide evidence that rice cultivation gives rise to a more cooperative social norm. The rationale behind the hypothesis is that unlike cultivating other crops, such as wheat or corn, farming rice historically required extensive cooperation among farmers. We travelled to four typical rice and non-rice provinces in China and recruited a total of 524 local university students as subjects. We find that rice subjects contribute more than their non-rice counterparts in the Public Goods Game with and without punishment, with the effect being a lot more pronounced in the former. Further analyses reveal a significant difference in frequency, though not in magnitude of punishment, but no difference in how the two groups react to punishment. It follows that the different levels of cooperativeness observed in the punishment treatments are a direct effect of the significant differences in frequency of punishment. Furthermore, as there is no difference between the two groups in the ultimatum and in the dictator game, we interpret from our results that rice cultivation does not make people more cooperative per se. Instead, it is more likely the case that people in rice regions understand the nature of public goods differently than their non-rice counterparts. We attribute the differences to a cultural norm resulting from a history of farming that affects the whole population living in that society.