Adaptive dynamics of eco-evolutionary repeated games: Effect of reward and punishment

Long-term evolutionary processes can strongly influence common-pool resource conservation by generating new traits or behaviors that modify the feedback between population strategies and the resource state. Here, we develop an eco-evolutionary framework in which individuals repeatedly interact with the same opponent and follow direct reciprocity through reactive strategies. The strategic dynamics are coupled to a renewable common resource and analyzed using adaptive dynamics. After our exhaustive non-linear dynamical analysis of 2 × 2 strategic games, we focus on comparative and combined usefulness of institutional incentives in the form of rewards and punishments in preventing the tragedy of the commons even when defection dominates in the replete resource state. We also report possibility of robust stable oscillations—emerging via Hopf bifurcation—in resource state and population strategies.