Career choice as an extended spatial evolutionary public goods game

Abstract

We propose an extended spatial evolutionary public goods game (SEPGG) model to study the dynamics of individual career choice and the corresponding social output. Based on the social value orientation theory, we study the game dynamics of players choosing from two types of work, namely the public work if it serves public interests, and the private work if it serves personal interests. Under the context of SEPGG, choosing public work is to cooperate and choosing private work is to defect. We then investigate the effects of employee productivity, human capital and external subsidies on individual career choices of the two work types, as well as the overall social welfare. From simulation results, we found that when employees have low productivity, they are more willing to enter the private sector. Although this will make both the effort level and human capital of individuals doing private work higher than those engaging in public work, the total outcome of the private sector is still lower than that of the public sector with a low level of public subsidies. When the employee productivity is higher for public work, a certain amount of subsidy can greatly improve system output. On the contrary, when employees in the public sector have low productivity, increasing the subsidy can result in a decline in social output.