Participation Costs Narrow Democratic Cooperation

2026-05-28

AI Summary

This study investigates how participation costs affect the stability of public goods cooperation and the sustainability of democratic redistribution institutions. Integrating an evolutionary game-theoretic model with a preregistered large-scale online experiment, the research demonstrates that voting costs not only reduce institutional participation rates but also induce “democratic free-riding” behavior and amplify individuals’ cognitive biases regarding actual participation levels, thereby undermining institutional visibility. A key contribution is the finding that zero-cost voting significantly enhances cooperative contributions. Moreover, participation costs primarily drive abstention rather than a shift in preference toward low contributors, and they widen the gap between actual behavior and perceived norms.

Abstract

Collective action often requires institutions that make cooperation individually worthwhile. We ask whether democratic allocation of public-good return can transform a repeated public good into a self-sustaining cooperative institution, and how participation costs reshape that process. A simple evolutionary model shows that voted redistribution can support a prosocial allocation order, but can also sustain an antisocial allocation order or democratic free riding, in which individuals benefit from an institution maintained by others while avoiding the cost of participation. The model predicts competing effects of voting cost. Cost can suppress use of the institution to reward low contributors under strong selection, but can also thin the active electorate and erode contributor-rewarding support. We test these predictions in a preregistered online experiment with \NIncludedGroupsVone{} five-person groups. Endogenous democratic redistribution increased contributions relative to an equal-share public-goods control, with zero-cost voting producing the strongest temporal improvement. Voting costs did not mainly turn active voters toward low-contributor-rewarding allocation. Instead, they shifted behavior toward abstention and democratic free riding, made abstention locally rewarding, and widened the gap between post-task perceptions of democratic participation and the behavioral record. Democratic allocation can therefore stabilize cooperation, but participation costs can reduce the number of people actively sustaining the institution and can make that erosion less visible to participants themselves.

Problem

• participation costs
• democratic cooperation
• public goods
• collective action
• free riding

Innovation

• democratic redistribution
• participation costs
• public goods game
• evolutionary model
• democratic free riding