Reputation-based mutual selection rule promotes cooperation in spatial threshold public goods games

Abstract

Most previous studies involving public goods games are investigated under a simplifying assumption that participation is either compulsive or unidirectional optional in collective interactions. Nevertheless, how the mutual selection rule, a more realistic participation mode, affects the evolution of cooperation in structured populations is still unclear. Here we introduce a reputation-based mutual selection rule for constituting participant groups into spatial threshold public goods games, where the public goods game can be conducted only if the participant number is not less than the threshold parameter. Interestingly, we find that moderate tolerance range results in the best environment for cooperators' viability. Also, we show that lower member threshold is favorable for the evolution of cooperation, and correspondingly provide some typical snapshots for defectors, "active" cooperators (cooperators on which the public goods games are successfully conducted), and "inactive" cooperators. Moreover, we investigate the effects of memory factor in individuals' reputation updating on the evolution of cooperation. Our work may provide an appropriate and alternative perspective in understanding the widespread cooperative behaviors in some realistic situations.

Individual choice and reputation distribution of cooperative behaviors among heterogeneous groups

“…Contrary to merely one homogenous population in existing studies, we introduce three groups, commons, elites and scoundrels, consisting of the whole society on a square lattice [4][5][6][13][14][15]17,[20][21][22]24]. Elites and scoundrels are derived from the commons that play games with the standard payoff matrix [3][4][5][6] in blue in Fig.…”

“…They utilize individual choices process to explain a macrolevel phenomenon in existing research [2,5,14,24]. It cannot be denied that ρ c is good indicator, but it is not the best choice.…”

“…ignoring its evolution on traits of distribution. As the outcome of individual choice, it should be deemed as an independent or explained variable as well; second, reputation merely indicates the non-negative summation of individual choice [3,5,24,58], which is not enough in that defection should be a negative term otherwise; third, spatial games with reputation are usually played within a homogenous groups [6,59], while in the real world diversity [6,17,24,27] and heterogeneity [31,59] are pervasive.…”

“…Among them, reputation is an important solution that efficiently countervails temptation [3,5,7,8,12,24]. Reputation records agents' history of cooperation or defection, so that each individuals or agents are able to identify, cooperate with, or imitate the neighbor with highest reputation [2,3,5].…”

Effect of local information within network layers on the evolution of cooperation in duplex public goods games

“…Public goods game (PGG), which is a multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma, is often employed as a typical model for studying grouped cooperation in the society [1][2][3][4][5][6]. In a traditional PGG, agents choose whether to invest in a public pool, then the total contributions in the public pool are multiplied by an enhancement factor, and finally the obtained payoffs will be divided equally to all the participants irrespective of their contributions [7].…”