A Group Public Goods Game with Position Uncertainty

TL;DR

This paper models a dynamic public goods game with group position uncertainty, revealing that cooperation can emerge even with limited information and that observing immediate predecessors influences contribution behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model of public goods contribution incorporating group position uncertainty and partial history observation, analyzing its impact on cooperation.

Findings

Cooperative outcomes are possible despite observing only defection history.

Players' observation of immediate predecessors significantly motivates contributions.

The model captures both inter- and intra-group behaviors under uncertainty.

Abstract

We model a dynamic public good contribution game, where players are (naturally) formed into groups. The groups are exogenously placed in a sequence, with limited information available to players about their groups' position in the sequence. Contribution decisions are made by players simultaneously and independently, and the groups' total contribution is made sequentially. We try to capture both inter and intra-group behaviors and analyze different situations where players observe partial history about total contributions of their predecessor groups. Given this framework, we show that even when players observe a history of defection (no contribution), a cooperative outcome is achievable. This is particularly interesting in the situation when players observe only their immediate predecessor groups' contribution, where we observe that players play an important role in motivating others to contribute.