Freedom of choice adds value to public goods

Lei Shi, Ivan Romic, Yongjuan Ma, Zhen Wang (), Boris Podobnik, H. Eugene Stanley (), Petter Holme and Marko Jusup ()
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Lei Shi: Statistics and Mathematics College, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming 650221, China; Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Data Science, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai 201209, China
Yongjuan Ma: Statistics and Mathematics College, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming 650221, China
Zhen Wang: Center for OPTical IMagery Analysis and Learning, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China; School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China
Boris Podobnik: Center for Polymer Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215; Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia; Zagreb School of Economics and Management, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia; Luxembourg School of Business, 2453 Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Faculty of Information Studies in Novo Mesto, SI-8000 Novo Mesto, Slovenia
H. Eugene Stanley: Center for Polymer Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215; Tokyo Tech World Research Hub Initiative, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan
Petter Holme: Tokyo Tech World Research Hub Initiative, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan
Marko Jusup: Tokyo Tech World Research Hub Initiative, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, vol. 117, issue 30, 17516-17521

Abstract: Public goods, ranging from judiciary to sanitation to parkland, permeate daily life. They have been a subject of intense interdisciplinary study, with a traditional focus being on participation levels in isolated public goods games (PGGs) as opposed to a more recent focus on participation in PGGs embedded into complex social networks. We merged the two perspectives by arranging voluntary participants into one of three network configurations, upon which volunteers played a number of iterated PGGs within their network neighborhood. The purpose was to test whether the topology of social networks or a freedom to express preferences for some local public goods over others affect participation. The results show that changes in social networks are of little consequence, yet volunteers significantly increase participation when they freely express preferences. Surprisingly, the increase in participation happens from the very beginning of the game experiment, before any information about how others play can be gathered. Such information does get used later in the game as volunteers seek to correlate contributions with higher returns, thus adding significant value to public goods overall. These results are ascribable to a small number of behavioral phenotypes, and suggest that societies may be better off with bottom-up schemes for public goods provision.

Keywords: social dilemma; cooperation; behavioral phenotypes; preferences; social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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