Commitment and Participation in Public Goods Games

Before engaging in a group venture agents may seek to secure commitments from other members of the group, and based on the level of participation (i.e. how many group members commit) they can then decide whether it is worth-while joining the group effort [12, 1, 5]. Many group ventures can be launched only when the majority of the participants commit to contribute to a common good [3]. While some international agreements require ratification by all parties before entering into force, most (especially global treaties) require a minimum less than the total number of negotiating countries [1, 3]. In group or coalition formation in multi-agent systems, a sufficient number of participants needs to agree on the terms of the agreement for it to be binding [13]. Commitments have been widely studied in multi-agent and autonomous agent systems, in order to ensure high levels of cooperation among agents [21, 2, 20]. They have also been utilized for ensuring good behaviors in various computerised applications such as electric vehicle charging [19] and peer-to-peer sharing networks [14]. In general, it appears that the required participation level depends on the nature of the problem in place. We investigate analytically and numerically whether commitment strategies, in which players propose, initiate and honor a commitment deal, evolve as viable strategies for the evolution of cooperative behavior in the Public Goods Game (PGG), while at the same time analyzing the effect of the participation level and the transition from a single to multiple-rounds version of the game [6].