Effects of environment knowledge on agglomeration and cooperation in spatial Public Goods Games

Nowadays, our society is characterized by high levels of social cohesion and cooperation that are in contrast with the selfish nature of human beings. One of the principal challenges for the social sciences is to explain the emergence of agglomeration and cooperative behavior in an environment characterized by egoistic individuals. In this paper we address this long standing problem with the tools given by evolutionary game theory. Specifically, we explore a model in which selfish individuals interact in a public goods creation environment. As a further ingredient each agent is characterized by an individual expectation and, if unsatisfied, can change its location. In this scenario we study the effects of the knowledge of other players’ performances on both cooperation and agglomeration and discuss the results in the context of previous and related works. Our results show that cooperation and agglomeration are generally robust against the inclusion of different information on other player performances and, in some cases, it can produce an enhancement of the cooperative behavior. Moreover, our results demonstrate that only in extreme and very competitive environments cooperation and agglomeration are lost.