Evolution of Cooperation Among Unequals with Game-Environment Feedback

In social activities, the conflict between individual interests and group interests often leads to social dilemmas. The theory of direct reciprocity suggests that repeated interactions can alleviate this dilemma, but it often assumes homogeneity among individuals. However, the widespread heterogeneity in the real world often diminishes cooperation. Fortunately, the dynamics of bidirectional feedback between game mechanisms and environmental conditions can exert a positive influence on the evolutionary progression of cooperative behavior. This paper investigates how heterogeneous individuals affect the evolution of cooperation with environmental feedback. Despite extensive literature showing that endowment inequality among individuals tends to diminish cooperation, our findings suggest that the implementation of appropriate environmental feedback mechanisms can facilitate the development of cooperation. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that appropriate environmental feedback mechanisms can significantly augment the propensity of homogeneous individuals for cooperative behavior. These results provide insights for decision-makers in formulating strategies related to fairness and the sharing of public goods.