Influence of network structure on cooperative dynamics in coupled socio-ecological systems

Abstract

Interactions in real-world social and biological organizations are complex. Spatial structures or social networks enable clusters of cooperators to outcompete defectors when the altruistic act of a cooperator benefits only its neighbors. In this context, it had been shown that cooperation is favored if the benefit-to-cost ratio of the altruistic act exceeds the average number of interactions. This implies that cooperation survives better in societies with less social ties. For coupled socio-ecological systems in which an unselfish act is assumed to benefit all users who have open access to the resource, we show that when social sanction is present, the opposite can happen: cooperation can be easily promoted in populations where virtually everyone knows everyone else but not in populations that possess fewer connections.

Sustainable use of renewable resources in a stylized social–ecological network model under heterogeneous resource distribution

“…Founded on a genuinely social-ecological perspective, we term these "World-Earth" system models to emphasize the free coevolution of the social and ecological components (Schellnhuber, 1998(Schellnhuber, , 1999. While sophisticated models of this type are not yet available, the literature contains various modeling studies that incorporate potentially important features such as static interaction networks (Chung et al, 2013;Sugiarto et al, 2015) to depict stylized social dynamics (Holme and Newman, 2006;Auer et al, 2015), tele-coupling effects in a globalized society interacting through social networks (Janssen et al, 2006;Bodin and Tengö, 2012), socialecological regime shifts (Scheffer et al, 2001;Lade et al, 2013) and (social) tipping elements (Schellnhuber, 2009;Bentley et al, 2014), structural reorganization occurring on adaptive social networks (Gross and Blasius, 2008;Snijders et al, 2010;Sayama et al, 2013;Schleussner et al, 2016) or structural transformations (Lade et al, 2017) and cultural preference dynamics due to traits such as imitation (Traulsen et al, 2010) or homophily (McPherson et al, 2001;Centola et al, 2007).…”

Network Economics and the Environment: Insights and Perspectives

“…Chung et al (2013) have enriched this model with an explicit account of the structure of local interactions, formalized by a social network. The thinner lines in figure 5 show results for a model where individuals only observe agents in their neighbourhood.…”

“…∈ (1,3.5) is the degree of defection relative to C, and is the frequency of C-types. Source: Chung et al, 2013.…”

Urban Network Economics and the Environment: Insights and Perspectives

“…The thinner lines in figure 5 show corresponding results for a model with local interaction where individuals only observe agents in their neighbourhood, thus allowing to study the influence of network structure on the effectiveness of social sanctions (this is taken from Chung et al, 2013). Here, the effect of the sanctions imposed on a norm violator is assumed to depend exclusively on the fraction of co-operators in the defector's neighbourhood.…”

“…Source: Chung et al, 2013. new links can be created and existing links destroyed in pursue of larger profits. The incentives to form or delete a link may well not align with social incentives, as the formation only requires the consent of the two interested nodes, and the deletion often only requires the consent of one of the interested nodes.…”