The Role of Heterogeneity and the Dynamics of Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods: An Experimental and Agent-Based Simulation Analysis

This paper examines the role of heterogeneous agents in the study of voluntary contributions to public goods. A human-subject experiment was conducted to classify agent types and determine their effects on contribution levels. Data from the experiment was used to build and calibrate an agent-based simulation model. The simulations display how different compositions of agent preference types affect the contribution levels. Findings indicate that the heterogeneity of cooperative preferences is an important determinant of a population’s contribution pattern.