  We show that in a situation where individuals have a choice between a costly
institute and a free institute to perform a collective action task, the
existence of a participation cost promotes cooperation in the costly institute.
Despite paying for a participation cost, costly cooperators, who join the
costly institute and cooperate, can out-perform defectors, who predominantly
join a free institute. This, not only promotes cooperation in the costly
institute but also facilitates the evolution of cooperation in the free
institute. A costly institute out-performs a free institute when the
profitability of the collective action is low. On the other hand, a free
institute performs better when the collective action's profitability is high.
Furthermore, we show that in a structured population, when individuals have a
choice between different institutes, a mutualistic relation between cooperators
with different institute preferences emerges and helps the evolution of
cooperation.
