Conditional cooperator enhances institutional punishment in public goods game

Boyu Zhang, Xinmiao An and Yali Dong

Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2021, vol. 390, issue C

Abstract: The role of incentive institutions on promoting cooperation in public goods game (PGG) has attracted much attention. Theoretical studies based on Nash equilibrium analysis predict that the punishment effect is often stronger than the reward effect. Although this result is confirmed by empirical studies, subjects do not always play these rational strategies. Recent experiments indicate that most subjects in PGGs are conditional cooperators who tend to contribute the group average. In this paper, we consider PGGs with three types of subjects, namely, cooperators, defectors, and conditional cooperators. Evolutionary game method is applied to investigate how conditional cooperators affect the effectiveness of different types of incentives. Overall, having conditional cooperators cannot lead to a higher contribution level in the standard PGG or the PGG with institutional rewards. However, they can enhance the effectiveness of institutional punishment, where a high contribution level can be maintained even for small punishments. As a consequence, in PGGs with conditional cooperators, punishment always leads to a higher contribution rate than do rewards. Numerical analysis indicates that this result is robust to errors in decision making.

Keywords: Public goods game; Reward; Punishment; Conditional cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:390:y:2021:i:c:s0096300320305555

DOI: 10.1016/j.amc.2020.125600

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