Status quo conservatism: A theory and a model

“Conventions accounts” of conservative behaviors model them as moves in pure coordination games, where agents lose more from failing to coordinate on any equilibrium than from coordinating on a bad equilibrium. Such models are criticised on the grounds that conservatism may spring from private and rigid adherence to the status quo, instead of strategic concerns about coordination. We address this by modeling agents with varying pay-off and long-term memories, using an experience-weighted attraction model. When negotiation is costly, agents playing a pure coordination game can coordinate around one spontaneously emerging “status quo” move, whose existence stabilises “flexible conservative” strategies, playing the status quo move by default but open to negotiation, and “rigidly conservative” strategies that invariably play the status quo. This model explains two empirical phenomena—why conservative strategies can remain stable for a minority only, and bounce back once suppressed—without assuming conformity, group identification, or risk aversion.