In group foraging situations, the conventional expectation is that increased food availability would enhance consumption, especially when animals prioritize maximizing their food intake. This paper challenges this conventional wisdom by conducting an in-depth game-theoretic analysis of a basic producer-scrounger model, in which animals must choose between intensive food searching as producers or moderate searching while relying on group members as scroungers. Surprisingly, our study reveals that, under certain circumstances, increasing food availability can amplify the inclination to scrounge to such an extent that it paradoxically leads to a reduction in animals' food consumption compared to scenarios with limited food availability. We further illustrate a similar phenomenon in a model capturing free-riding dynamics among workers in a company. We demonstrate that, under certain reward mechanisms, enhancing workers' production capacities can inadvertently trigger a surge in free-riding behavior, leading to both diminished group productivity and reduced individual payoffs. Our findings underscore the significance of contextual factors when comprehending and predicting the impact of resource availability on individual and collective outcomes.

翻译：在群体觅食情境中，传统预期认为提高食物可得性会促进消耗量，尤其当动物优先考虑最大化食物摄入时。本文通过对基础生产者-偷窃者模型进行深度博弈论分析，挑战了这一传统认知——该模型中动物必须在作为生产者进行密集觅食与作为偷窃者进行适度搜寻并依赖群体成员之间做出选择。令人惊讶的是，我们的研究表明，在某些条件下，增加食物可得性会显著加剧偷窃倾向，以至于在食物消耗量方面出现与食物匮乏情境相比反而降低的矛盾现象。我们进一步在企业员工搭便车行为的类比模型中揭示了类似现象：在某些奖励机制下，提升员工生产能力可能无意中引发搭便车行为激增，最终导致群体生产率下降与个体收益减少。我们的发现强调，在理解与预测资源可得性对个体及集体结果的影响时，必须充分考虑情境因素的重要性。