Reputation-Based Investment Helps to Optimize Group Behaviors in Spatial Lattice Networks

PLoS One. 2016 Sep 9;11(9):e0162781. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162781. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Encouraging cooperation among selfish individuals is crucial in many real-world systems, where individuals' collective behaviors can be analyzed using evolutionary public goods game. Along this line, extensive studies have shown that reputation is an effective mechanism to investigate the evolution of cooperation. In most existing studies, participating individuals in a public goods game are assumed to contribute unconditionally into the public pool, or they can choose partners based on a common reputation standard (e.g., preferences or characters). However, to assign one reputation standard for all individuals is impractical in many real-world deployment. In this paper, we introduce a reputation tolerance mechanism that allows an individual to select its potential partners and decide whether or not to contribute an investment to the public pool based on its tolerance to other individuals' reputation. Specifically, an individual takes part in a public goods game only if the number of participants with higher reputation exceeds the value of its tolerance. Moreover, in this paper, an individual's reputation can increase or decrease in a bounded interval based on its historical behaviors. We explore the principle that how the reputation tolerance and conditional investment mechanisms can affect the evolution of cooperation in spatial lattice networks. Our simulation results demonstrate that a larger tolerance value can achieve an environment that promote the cooperation of participants.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Biological Evolution
  • Cooperative Behavior*
  • Investments*
  • Models, Theoretical

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61100194 and 61272173):YRZ http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/ and National Natural Foundation of China (No.: 81402760):BYS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.