Considering Provision of Global Public Goods with Community Task Game: A Multi-agent Simulation Analysis

Abstract

The provision of public goods is often problematic both in the international society and in local communities because it is hard to establish a government that forces its constituents to conform to a shared rule in both types of society. In this chapter, we employ a multi-agent simulation to analyze the issue of providing global public goods (GPGs), since multi-agent simulation is a useful tool to model and analyze complex phenomena including international political situations consisting of heterogeneous individuals with the complex and dynamic relationships among them. The situation of provision of a GPG is modeled with a Community Task Game, which is an extension of public goods game. We introduce two internal states of agents; one is self-efficacy, an agent’s self-recognition of its ability to successfully perform a task; and the other is subjective norm, an agent’s own understanding about others’ desire for the agent to perform a task. Based on the simulation analysis about the effects of these two variables on the provision of GPGs, we show that the former works to maintain one’s intention to continue participating in GPG provision activities and the latter to promote agents’ intentions to participate. This means that two internal states synergistically function to provide GPGs. Further analysis shows that a possible intervention for GPG provision is to encourage country groups with neutral attitudes and relatively strong mutual relationships to participate in a GPG provision activity. We also discuss the development of the present model to incorporate heterogeneities, to measure the dynamics of the international political situation, and to consider countries’ various recognition of the game situation.