Why do tourist attractions always rip off customers? Is there any good way to control it?

The behavior of robbing tourists in tourist attractions is nothing new. There are Qingdao prawns worth 38 yuan each two years ago, Yunnan jade bracelets worth 300,000 yuan broken into pieces, and the Shaolin Temple even earlier. Everyone must have heard of the incense worth hundreds of dollars, the sky-high price of seafood in Sanya for thousands of dollars, and the unforgettable "bridal chamber" in Xishuangbanna.

Why do tourist attractions often see this kind of rip-off behavior? Is it just because of what people say is inadequate government supervision? of course not. Relevant government departments monitor prices and cannot visit stores every day. Of course, these merchants will not be stupid enough to clearly mark the prices when ripping off customers. They are profiteers. Only when they see that you are a foreign tourist will they become aggressive. born.

The customer-killing behavior of tourist attractions can be explained by the "one-time game" in economics. A "one-time game" refers to a game in which both parties have only one strategy choice. Since both parties only need to consider the transaction costs this time and do not need to consider the subsequent possible transaction costs, the strategy selection is very "self-interested". situation. For example, in the story of "Prisoner's Dilemma", the optimal solution is obviously "both prisoners deny the crime and each is sentenced to one year in prison." But because "if one of the two confesses and the other denies, the one who confesses will be released and the one who denies will be sentenced to ten years." Therefore, both parties pursued maximizing their personal interests and hoped to be the one released, so the final outcome became "both confessed, and each was sentenced to eight years." The same is true for the behavior of rip-off customers in tourist attractions. Since it is a one-time deal between merchants and customers, the possibility of tourists coming back again because of the high quality and low price of the goods is almost zero. Under the guidance of one-time game thinking, merchants will only consider how to maximize their own interests, so there will be cheating, abduction and other customer-killing behaviors.

If you want to control this kind of customer rip-off behavior, you cannot just rely on strengthening government supervision, because that will bring huge administrative costs. The truly effective way is to change this "one-time game" into a "multiple game", that is, the game under the same structure is repeated many times, or even infinitely. In a prisoner game that is repeated many times, each player has the opportunity to "punish" the other player for his non-cooperative behavior in the previous round, which in turn will lead to a cooperative outcome. Similarly, in tourist attractions, if there is an open evaluation mechanism that allows future customers to see the true score of each merchant, it can effectively change the one-time game thinking of merchants. The emergence of Internet companies such as Dianping, Taobao, and Meituan, as well as the emergence of rapid word-of-mouth fermentation channels such as Weibo and Moments, have changed the environment for merchants from a "one-time game" to a "multiple game" environment, making it difficult for businesses to Dare to make a one-time deal and become more honest.

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