Equilibrium selection: Payoff or risk dominance?: The case of the “weakest link”

When a game has more than one Nash equilibrium, a coordination issue arises. Pareto and risk dominations are two available criteria to select one of them. There is a debate on how to use these criteria when they point in different directions. We study the first wave of the Weakest Link show broadcast in France to generate field data on this issue. Observed behavior can be rationalized in terms of Pareto and risk-domination. The payoff-dominant equilibrium is selected if it is not too risky otherwise players coordinate themselves according to risk-dominance. This rationalization is in line with the experimental literature.