Abstract:

A situation in which one must make a choice between his reputation and profit is so called a reputation-profit game. Individual usually tends to sacrifice their profit to obtain reputation in this kind of game. Competitive altruism theory regards the reputation obtaining behavior as a strategy with which one can attract investor’s interest to gain more profit from the investment in the future. The identity of the observer would affect the degree of gamer’s tendency of reputation obtaining behavior. According to the purpose of reputation, observer’s objective capacity to pay back the investment of reputation (e.g. ability) which would decide the upper limit of the possible benefits in the future and observer’s subjective capacity to pay back the investment of reputation (e.g. social distance) which means the degree to which the gamer believes the observer would give him the chance would affect the generating of reputation obtaining behavior jointly. And these two capacities should be viewed as core factors which would decide the tendency of the game. Based on these two core factors, three levels of identity information (detailed/specific/ambiguous identity) should be taken seriously in future researches to verify the effectiveness of these two factors and provide empirical evidences for the construction of the mechanism of reputation-profit game.

Key words: reputation-profit game, reputation, competitive altruism, social identity