The Evolution of Citizen Participation and Regulatory Success

In an evolutionary game setting in which three different types of player are randomly matched it is shown that a full compliance with an environmental regulation can be evolved as an asymptotically stable state, but this critically depends on the size of a defector’s additional payoff at no private monitoring to a cooperator’s payoff, relative to his expected fine from an enforcer’s monitoring. Also with enforcers’ willingness to monitor voluntarily affected by their relative population share to defectors’, it is warned that even though the regulatory agency is strong in its policy, the society could be stuck in the neighborhood of the initial state if defectors are already many and a little larger than enforcers.