The coevolution of partner switching and strategy updating in non-excludable public goods game

Spatial public goods game is a popular metaphor to model the dilemma of collective cooperation on graphs, yet the non-excludable property of public goods has seldom been considered in previous models. Based upon a coevolutionary model where agents play public goods games and adjust their partnerships, the present model incorporates the non-excludable property of public goods: agents are able to adjust their participation in the games hosted by others, whereas they cannot exclude others from their own games. In the coevolution, a directed and dynamical network which represents partnerships among autonomous agents is evolved. We find that non-excludable property counteracts the positive effect of partner switching, i.e., the equilibrium level of cooperation is lower than that in the situation of excludable public goods game. Therefore, we study the effect of individual punishment that cooperative agents pay a personal cost to decrease benefits of those defective neighbors who participate in their hosted games. It is found that the cooperation level in the whole population is heightened in the presence of such a costly behavior.     

Evolution of Cooperation in Public Goods Games

We investigate the evolution of cooperation with evolutionary public goods games based on finite populations, where four pure strategies: cooperators, efectors, punishers and loners who are unwilling to participate are considered. By adopting approximate best response dynamics, we show
that the magnitude of rationality not only quantitatively explains the experiment results in [Nature (London) {\bf 425} (2003) 390], but also it will heavily
influence the evolution of cooperation. Compared with previous results of infinite populations, which result in two equilibriums, we show that there merely exists a special equilibrium and the relevant high value of bounded rationality will sustain cooperation. In addition, we characterize that loner's payoff plays an active role in the maintenance of cooperation, which will only be warranted for the low and moderate values of loner's payoff. It thus indicates
the effects of rationality and loner's payoff will influence the cooperation. Finally, we highlight the important result that the introduction of voluntary participation and punishment will facilitate cooperation greatly.     

Optional contributions have positive effects for volunteering public goods games

Public goods (PG) games with the volunteering mechanism are referred to as volunteering public goods (VPG) games, in which loners are introduced to the PG games, and a loner obtains a constant payoff but not participating the game. Considering that small contributions may have positive effects to encourage more players with bounded rationality to contribute, this paper introduces optional contributions (high value or low value) to these typical VPG games—a cooperator can contribute a high or low payoff to the public pools. With the low contribution, the logit dynamics show that cooperation can be promoted in a well mixed population comparing to the typical VPG games, furthermore, as the multiplication factor is greater than a threshold, the average payoff of the population is also enhanced. In spatial VPG games, we introduce a new adjusting mechanism that is an approximation to best response. Some results in agreement with the prediction of the logit dynamics are found. These simulation results reveal that for VPG games the option of low contributions may be a better method to stimulate the growth of cooperation frequency and the average payoff of the population.     

Static and evolutionary quantum public goods games

We apply the continuous-variable quantization scheme to quantize public goods game and find that new pure strategy Nash equilibria emerge in the static case. Furthermore, in the evolutionary public goods game, entanglement can also contribute to the persistence of cooperation under various population structures without altruism, voluntary participation, and punishment.     

Tolerance-based punishment in continuous public goods game

Altruistic punishment for defectors is considered as a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. However, there is no clear border between the cooperative and defective behaviors in a continuous strategy game. We propose a model to study the effect of punishment on the evolution of cooperation in continuous public goods game, wherein individuals have the traits to punish the co-players based on social tolerance. We show that a reasonable punishment with a uniform tolerance can spur individuals to make more investments. Additionally, for a fixed punishment cost and a fixed fine, a moderate value of tolerance can result in the best promotion of cooperation. Furthermore, we investigate the coevolutionary dynamics of investment and tolerance. We find that the population splits into two branches: high-tolerance individuals who make high investments and low-tolerance individuals who make low investments. A dynamic equilibrium is achieved between these two types of individuals. Our work extends punishment to continuous cooperative behaviors and the results may enhance the understanding of altruistic punishment in the evolution of human cooperation.     

Maintenance of cooperation induced by punishment in public goods games

In this paper, we study the public goods games with punishment by adopting the well-known approximate best response dynamics. It shows that the evolution of cooperation is affected by two aspects when other parameters are fixed. One is the punishment mechanism which can avoid the dilemma of lacking investment, and the other is the degree of rationality. Theoretical analysis and numerical results indicate that the existence of punishment mechanism and distribution of rationality are the keys to the enhancement of cooperation level. We also testify that they can heavily influence the payoffs of system as well. The findings in this paper may provide a deeper understanding of some social dilemmas.     

Continuous spatial public goods game with self and peer punishment based on particle swarm optimization

How cooperative behavior emerges and evolves in human society remains a puzzle. It has been observed that the sense of guilt rooted from free-riding and the sense of justice for punishing the free-riders are prevalent in the real world. Inspired by this observation, two punishment mechanisms have been introduced in the spatial public goods game which are called self-punishment and peer punishment respectively in this paper. In each situation, we have introduced a corresponding parameter to describe the level of individual tolerance or social tolerance. For each individual, whether to punish others or whether it will be punished by others depends on the corresponding tolerance parameter. We focus on the effects of the two kinds of tolerance parameters on the cooperation of the population. The particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based learning rule is used to describe the strategy updating process of individuals. We consider both of the memory and the imitation in our model. Via simulation experiments, we find that both of the two punishment mechanisms could facilitate the promotion of cooperation to a large extent. For the self-punishment and for most parameters in the peer punishment, the smaller the tolerance parameter, the more conducive it is to promote cooperation. These results can help us to better understand the prevailing phenomenon of cooperation in the real world.     

自我质疑机制下公共物品博弈模型的相变特性

公共物品博弈是研究群体相互作用的经典模型,广泛用于解释自私个体间合作的涌现和保持.本文从理论分析和蒙特卡罗模拟两个方面研究了二维正方格子上一个有偿惩罚机制下随自我质疑更新规则演化的公共物品博弈模型的相变特性.理论分析方面,将公共物品博弈模型转化为一个外场不为零的铁磁Ising模型.通过有效能量发现:不存在惩罚时,个体间的耦合强度为零,体系只有外场作用;存在惩罚时,个体间包含最近邻、次近邻和第三近邻相互作用且外场不为零.蒙特卡罗模拟方面,首先验证了理论分析的正确性,然后对公共物品博弈模型相关的一级相变和二级相变进行了有限尺度标度分析.研究发现:1)蒙特卡罗模拟所得结果与类Ising模型分析结果完全吻合;2)相比二维Ising模型,公共物品博弈的二级相变临界指数发生了变化;3)公共物品博弈的一级相变与二维Ising模型相同.     

Coevolving agent strategies and network topology for the public goods games

Much of human cooperation remains an evolutionary riddle. Coevolutionary public goods games in structured populations are studied where players can change from an unproductive public goods game to a productive one, by evaluating the productivity of the public goods games. In our model, each individual participates in games organized by its neighborhood plus by itself. Coevolution here refers to an evolutionary process entailing both deletion of existing links and addition of new links between agents that accompanies the evolution of their strategies. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of time scale separation of strategy and structure on cooperation level. This study presents the following: Foremost, we observe that high cooperation levels in public goods interactions are attained by the entangled coevolution of strategy and structure. Presented results also confirm that the resulting networks show many features of real systems, such as cooperative behavior and hierarchical clustering. The heterogeneity of the interaction network is held responsible for the observed promotion of cooperation. We hope our work may offer an explanation for the origin of large-scale cooperative behavior among unrelated individuals.     

Cooperation and charity in spatial public goods game under different strategy update rules

Human cooperation can be influenced by other human behaviors and recent years have witnessed the flourishing of studying the coevolution of cooperation and punishment, yet the common behavior of charity is seldom considered in game-theoretical models. In this article, we investigate the coevolution of altruistic cooperation and egalitarian charity in spatial public goods game, by considering charity as the behavior of reducing inter-individual payoff differences. Our model is that, in each generation of the evolution, individuals play games first and accumulate payoff benefits, and then each egalitarian makes a charity donation by payoff transfer in its neighborhood. To study the individual-level evolutionary dynamics, we adopt different strategy update rules and investigate their effects on charity and cooperation. These rules can be classified into two global rules: random selection rule in which individuals randomly update strategies, and threshold selection rule where only those with payoffs below a threshold update strategies. Simulation results show that random selection enhances the cooperation level, while threshold selection lowers the threshold of the multiplication factor to maintain cooperation. When charity is considered, it is incapable in promoting cooperation under random selection, whereas it promotes cooperation under threshold selection. Interestingly, the evolution of charity strongly depends on the dispersion of payoff acquisitions of the population, which agrees with previous results. Our work may shed light on understanding human egalitarianism.     

Stochastic evolutionary public goods game with first and second order costly punishments in finite populations

We study the stochastic evolutionary public goods game with punishment in a finite size population. Two kinds of costly punishments are considered, i.e., first-order punishment in which only the defectors are punished, and second-order punishment in which both the defectors and the cooperators who do not punish the defective behaviors are punished. We focus on the stochastic stable equilibrium of the system. In the population, the evolutionary process of strategies is described as a finite state Markov process. The evolutionary equilibrium of the system and its stochastic stability are analyzed by the limit distribution of the Markov process. By numerical experiments, our findings are as follows.(i) The first-order costly punishment can change the evolutionary dynamics and equilibrium of the public goods game, and it can promote cooperation only when both the intensity of punishment and the return on investment parameters are large enough.(ii)Under the first-order punishment, the further imposition of the second-order punishment cannot change the evolutionary dynamics of the system dramatically, but can only change the probability of the system to select the equilibrium points in the "C+P" states, which refer to the co-existence states of cooperation and punishment. The second-order punishment has limited roles in promoting cooperation, except for some critical combinations of parameters.(iii) When the system chooses"C+P" states with probability one, the increase of the punishment probability under second-order punishment will further increase the proportion of the "P" strategy in the "C+P" states.     

Phase transitions and volunteering in spatial public goods games

We present a simple yet effective mechanism promoting cooperation under full anonymity by allowing for voluntary participation in public goods games. This natural extension leads to "rock-scissors-paper"-type cyclic dominance of the three strategies, cooperate, defect, and loner. In spatial settings with players arranged on a regular lattice, this results in interesting dynamical properties and intriguing spatiotemporal patterns. In particular, variations of the value of the public good leads to transitions between one-, two-, and three-strategy states which either are in the class of directed percolation or show interesting analogies to Ising-type models. Although volunteering is incapable of stabilizing cooperation, it efficiently prevents successful spreading of selfish behavior.     

Heritability promotes cooperation in spatial public goods games

Heritability is ubiquitous within most real biological or social systems. A heritable trait is most simply an offspring’s trait that resembles the parent’s corresponding trait, which can be fitness, strategy, or the way of strategy adoption for evolutionary games. Here we study the effects of heritability on the evolution of spatial public goods games. In our model, the fitness of players is determined by the payoffs from the current interactions and their history. Based on extensive simulations, we find that the density of cooperators is enhanced by increasing the heritability of players over a wide range of the multiplication factor. We attribute the enhancement of cooperation to the inherited fitness that stabilizes the fitness of players, and thus prevents the expansion of defectors effectively.     

Evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game with the third-order reputation evaluation

In this letter, in order to deeply explore the role of individual reputation in the evolutionary game dynamics, we present a new third-order reputation evaluation model to discuss the evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game. In the current model, we should not only consider the strategy (cooperation, C or defection, D) of a focal player, but also take his own reputation and his opponent's reputation status into account. Among them, the individual reputation will be divided into being good and bad according to the specified threshold, and the good player will be endowed with the more influential strategy transfer ability, which further helps to create the clusters of cooperative and good players within the population and then fosters the cooperation. A large plethora of experimental simulation results indicate that four rules under the third-order reputation mechanism can lead to the promotion of cooperation when compared to the traditional public goods game model. The current work is conductive to a better understanding of the persistence and emergence of collective cooperation in real-world systems.     

Evolution of cooperation in a heterogeneous population with influential individuals

Influential individuals are introduced and integrated with the public goods game (PGG) to investigate their influence on the emergence and evolution of cooperation. In the model, some influential individuals whose behaviors can be controlled by us are introduced into a homogeneous population on a square lattice. The influential individuals can play three kinds of roles: I. exemplar, II. supervisor with the power to punish defectors, and III. supervisor with the power to reward cooperative co-players. It is found that the existence of influential individuals who play Role I turns out to be detrimental to cooperation and that the larger the number of influential individuals is, the more difficult it is for cooperation to be maintained. For those playing supervisory roles, both punishment and reward are found to be effective ways for the influential individuals to promote and stabilize cooperative behavior. By comparing the critical costs and the mean payoffs for a low multiplication factor under the role of punishment and the role of reward, it is found that reward is a more effective intervention measure than punishment for influential individuals seeking to improve cooperation and that reward leads to a higher mean payoff.     

Diversity of contribution promotes cooperation in public goods games

In most previous studies of public goods game, individuals conventionally donate their contributions equally to the games they participate in. We develop an extended public goods game model, in which individuals distribute their contributions based on the groups’ qualities. Namely, the individuals are allowed to increase their investment to the superior groups at the expense of the nasty ones. The quality of a group is positively correlated with its cooperation level. In numerical simulations, synchronized stochastic strategy updating rule based on pairwise comparison for a fixed noise level is adopted. The results show that the high-quality group preference mechanism can greatly improve cooperation, compared with conventional models. Besides, the system with stronger preference toward high-quality groups performs better. Investigation of wealth distribution at equilibrium reveals that cooperators’ wealth appreciates with the increase of preference degree when cooperators take up the same fraction of the population.     

Benefits of intervention in spatial public goods games

The anarchy driven by private punishment is inopportune and inappropriate in modern human societies. It is necessary for a person to appeal to a higher authority such as the police so that a society can maintain more stable. We introduce strategy intervention instead of punishment in spatial public goods game. Some defectors are forced to contribute to the common pool. We show how strategy intervention affects cooperation of a population. Interestingly, weak intervention restrains the impact of spatial reciprocity leading to a lower level of cooperation or even a full defection state. Such phenomena are in contrast to ordinary intuitions. Intervention is enforced by a higher authority which avoids the second-order problems. Furthermore, high synergy factor and proper intervention has a mutual impact on increasing group incomes. We highlight the importance of institutional intervention in a stable society.     

Punishment in optional public goods games

In this work,the optional public goods games with punishment are studied.By adopting the approximate best response dynamics,a micro model is given to explain the evolutionary process.Simultaneously,the magnitude of rationality is also considered.Under the condition of bounded rationality which provides a light to interpret phenomena in human society,the model leads to two types of equilibriums.One is the equilibrium without punishers and the other is the equilibrium including only punishers and cooperators.In addition,the effects of rationality on equilibriums are briefly investigated.     

Pool expulsion and cooperation in the spatial public goods game

We study the evolution of cooperation in the spatial public goods game with cooperation, defection, and pool expulsion as the three competing strategies. Using the Monte Carlo method, we show that the evolution of pool expulsion and cooperation can be maintained even if the synergistic effects are not high enough to sustain cooperation based on spatial reciprocity alone, and even if the cost of pool expulsion is not negligible. Interestingly, pool expellers are protected against, or even prevail over, defectors as a result of spatial pattern formation, by means of which vacant sites form an active layer around them. Moreover, we observe continuous and discontinuous phase transitions between frozen coexistence, stationary coexistence, absorbing states, and oscillatory states in the phase diagrams. Our results indicate that pool expulsion might play an important role in the resolution of social dilemmas that unfold in groups.     

Heterogeneity of allocation promotes cooperation in public goods games

We investigate the effects of heterogeneous investment and distribution on the evolution of cooperation in the context of the public goods games. To do this, we develop a simple model in which each individual allocates differing funds to his direct neighbors based upon their difference in connectivity, because of the heterogeneity of real social ties. This difference is characterized by the weight of the link between paired individuals, with an adjustable parameter precisely controlling the heterogeneous level of ties. By numerical simulations, it is found that allocating both too much and too little funds to diverse neighbors can remarkably improve the cooperation level. However, there exists a worst mode of funds allocation leading to the most unfavorable cooperation induced by the moderate values of the parameter. In order to better reveal the potential causes behind these nontrivial phenomena we probe the microscopic characteristics including the average payoff and the cooperator density for individuals of different degrees. It demonstrates rather different dynamical behaviors between the modes of these two types of cooperation promoter. Besides, we also investigate the total link weights of individuals numerically and theoretically for negative values of the parameter, and conclude that the payoff magnitude of middle-degree nodes plays a crucial role in determining the cooperators’ fate.