Distribution of Resources in a Social Dilemma Situation

Abstract

This article aims to present the possibility of interpreting a social dilemma situation in a new manner using mathematical analysis that analyzes the situation from the perspective of the distribution of resources and a social evaluation of this distribution. This is an alternative perspective on social dilemma studies compared with the conventional rational choice theoretical framework. It is from this perspective that we focus on the relationship between group size and social equality standard.The results of our analysis reveal that in a certain condition, an increase in the group size leads to an overall improvement in social equality and the social summation of resource (payoff), but it decreases the proportion of Pareto optimum distributions to all possible distributions in the social dilemma situation. Given that players consider social equality while making choices of their strategies, we can state that these results imply that an increase in the group size breaks their psychological barrier to defection and facilitates the realization of all defections. In other words, an increase in the group size heightens the “intensity of the dilemma.” This interpretation of results suggests a possible solution for “Olson's problem.”