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Non-trivial reputation effects on social decision making in virtual environment

Reputation systems are currently used, often with success, to ensure the functioning of online services as well as of e-commerce sites. Despite the relationship between reputation and material cooperative behaviours is quite supported, less obvious appears the relationship with informative behaviours, which are crucial for the transmission of reputational information and therefore for the maintenance of cooperation among individuals. The purpose of this study was to verify how reputation affects cooperation dynamics in virtual environment, within a social dilemma situation (i.e., where there are incentives to act selfishly). The results confirm that reputation can activate prosocial conducts, however it highlights also the limitations and distortions that reputation can create.