Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter June 9, 2012

Altruism and Local Interaction

  • Jonas Hedlund

This paper studies altruistic behavior in a model of local interaction. Individuals live on a circle and choose whether to altruistically provide a local public good. Choices are based on imitation of successful neighbors and experimentation. The public good is assumed to be less local than imitation. In the absence of experimentation altruism can prevail and coexist with egoism as long as the public good is non-global. With experimentation altruism persists in the long run only if the population is large relative to the reach of the public good.

Published Online: 2012-6-9

©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 19.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/1935-1704.1851/html
Scroll to top button