Evolution of commitment and level of participation in public goods games

Abstract

Before engaging in a group venture agents may require commitments from other members in the group, and based on the level of acceptance (participation) they can then decide whether it is worthwhile joining the group effort. Here, we show in the context of public goods games and using stochastic evolutionary game theory modelling, which implies imitation and mutation dynamics, that arranging prior commitments while imposing a minimal participation when interacting in groups induces agents to behave cooperatively. Our analytical and numerical results show that if the cost of arranging the commitment is sufficiently small compared to the cost of cooperation, commitment arranging behavior is frequent, leading to a high level of cooperation in the population. Moreover, an optimal participation level emerges depending both on the dilemma at stake and on the cost of arranging the commitment. Namely, the harsher the common good dilemma is, and the costlier it becomes to arrange the commitment, the more participants should explicitly commit to the agreement to ensure the success of the joint venture. Furthermore, considering that commitment deals may last for more than one encounter, we show that commitment proposers can be lenient in case of short-term agreements, yet should be strict in case of long-term interactions. B The Anh Han

Evolutionary Dynamics of Coordinated Cooperation

“…Through a finite population game dynamics analysis, Han et al (2017a) essentially found a similar evolutionary cycle, from unconditional defectors to conditional cooperators, then to unconditional cooperators, and then to unconditional defectors again. In contrast, there is a remarkable difference between these two models.…”

“…If one breaks the commitment he or she has to pay a fine. It has been shown that a large fine enhances the success of commitment strategies (Han et al, 2013(Han et al, , 2015a(Han et al, , 2017a. Another possible way to suppress those who make a fake commitment would be to exclude them from other games in the future.…”

“…Among those papers on pre-commitments, Han et al (2017a) has notable similarity to my current model, because both study public goods games and consider conditional cooperators who are keen to the behavior of others in the group. Through a finite population game dynamics analysis, Han et al (2017a) essentially found a similar evolutionary cycle, from unconditional defectors to conditional cooperators, then to unconditional cooperators, and then to unconditional defectors again.…”

“…In my model players make "commitments" to cooperate or to defect depending on the number of other cooperators and defectors during a process of dynamic negotiation. In the model of Han et al (2017a), however, all players except pure defectors first do make commitments to cooperate, and then count the number of committers to see if this number exceeds their threshold to actually play the public goods game.…”

Emergence of Coordination with Asymmetric Benefits via Prior Commitment

“…Recently, the capacity to create, and commit to, prior agreements (Nesse, 2001;Frank, 1988;Han et al, 2017Han et al, , 2015a) has been proposed as an evolutionarily viable strategy inducing cooperative behaviour in the context of cooperation dilemmas; namely, the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) (Han et al, 2013) and the Public Goods Game (PGG) (Han et al, 2017). It provides an alternative to different forms of punishment against inappropriate behaviour and of rewards to stimulate the appropriate one (Martinez-Vaquero et al, 2015;Sasaki et al, 2015;Powers et al, 2012).…”