Evolution of cooperation in costly institutes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that participation costs can promote cooperation in costly institutes and that structured populations with institute choice foster mutualistic cooperation, especially under low profitability conditions.

Contribution

It reveals how participation costs and structured populations influence cooperation dynamics between costly and free institutes, introducing a mutualistic cooperation mechanism.

Findings

Participation costs promote cooperation in costly institutes.

Costly cooperators outperform defectors despite costs.

Mutualistic relations emerge in structured populations.

Abstract

We show that in a situation where individuals have a choice between a costly institute and a free institute to perform a collective action task, the existence of a participation cost promotes cooperation in the costly institute. Despite paying for a participation cost, costly cooperators, who join the costly institute and cooperate, can out-perform defectors, who predominantly join a free institute. This, not only promotes cooperation in the costly institute but also facilitates the evolution of cooperation in the free institute. A costly institute out-performs a free institute when the profitability of the collective action is low. On the other hand, a free institute performs better when the collective action's profitability is high. Furthermore, we show that in a structured population, when individuals have a choice between different institutes, a mutualistic relation between cooperators with different institute preferences emerges and helps the evolution of cooperation.