Public goods game

A game in which individuals decide how much to contribute to a shared resource whose benefits are distributed among a group. It models the tension between private incentives and collective benefit.

Social dilemma: A situation in which individually rational choices produce an outcome worse for a group. Contributing creates a conflict between personal payoff and the group's shared return.
Public goods experiment: A controlled study that measures contributions to a shared account under specified incentives. Laboratory experiments instantiate the game and vary its rules to test behavior.
Mancur Olson: An American economist and political scientist known for analyzing collective action and group incentives. His account of collective action helped frame the incentive problem modeled by the game.
Dictator game: A game in which one player unilaterally allocates a resource between themselves and another person. It measures giving without the strategic interdependence of shared contributions.
Free-rider problem: The problem that people can benefit from a shared good without paying its costs. A noncontributor can enjoy the public good funded by others.
Conditional cooperation: A pattern in which people cooperate more when they believe others are cooperating. It helps explain why contributions can persist despite incentives to free-ride.
Garrett Hardin: An American ecologist who popularized the phrase “tragedy of the commons” in 1968. His influential essay presented a related conflict between private incentives and shared resources.
Trust game: A sequential game in which one player transfers resources to another, who then decides how much to return. Trust and reciprocity replace the public contribution decision as the central strategic issue.
N-person prisoner's dilemma: A strategic game in which many players can gain by cooperating, while each has an incentive to defect. The game's incentives extend the cooperation conflict beyond two players.
Punishment in public goods games: The use of sanctions against low contributors in public goods experiments. Adding punishment tests whether enforcement can sustain group contributions.

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