Who Saves us From Risk? Altruists Promote Cooperation in a Public Investment Game

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel public investment game demonstrating that altruistic resource distribution by agents enhances cooperation and mitigates free-riding in risky commons, outperforming traditional sanction methods.

Contribution

The paper presents a new experimental game showing altruistic distribution improves cooperation and can influence selfish agents, offering an alternative to sanctions in managing risky commons.

Findings

Altruistic agents extract fewer resources, promoting cooperation.

Altruistic distribution influences selfish agents positively.

The effect replicates in one-shot settings.

Abstract

Providing commons in the risky world is crucial for human survival, however, suffers more from the "free-riding" problem. Here, we proposed a solution that limits the access of the resource to an agent and tested its efficiency with a novel public investment game. On each trial, all group members invest in an agent responsible for a gamble and distribution. Resources are distributed evenly between non-agent group members after the agent extracts for him/herself. In 3 laboratory experiments (n = 704), we found that, as an agent, many participants extracted fewer resources than others. This altruistic distribution strategy improved cooperation levels. Furthermore, this cooperation-promoting effect could be spread to selfish agents who are in the same group as the altruistic agent and was replicated in a one-shot setting. We proposed that, when the commons are under risk, this distribution solution serves as a better alternative to the well-documented sanction solutions.