Search Results (19)

This paper investigates the evolution of public cooperation within a four-strategy public goods game that incorporates both consistently and inconsistently moralistic exclusion mechanisms. Using replicator dynamics in an infinite well-mixed population, we demonstrate that the presence of Inconsistent Moralists (IMs), i.e., non-contributors who hypocritically exclude other defectors, fundamentally reshapes the dynamical structure of the multi-player social dilemma game. While the system admits no interior fixed point and the IM strategy itself is evolutionarily unstable, IM acts as a critical catalyst by destabilizing pure defection and redirecting evolutionary trajectories toward exclusion-based cooperation. Ultimately, these findings reveal that diverse enforcement strategies can qualitatively alter evolutionary outcomes by providing a previously overlooked indirect pathway for cooperation to emerge and persist in social dilemmas. Full article

The fact that data can be privately possessed yet contain the attributes of public goods leads to the “Arrow’s Information Paradox” in data trading. If left unchecked, supply-side deception about data quality and demand-side data leakage can seriously undermine the trust between suppliers and demanders. Inspired by the ideas of reputation and punishment, this paper combines a risk compensation mechanism, which is widely available in the financial sector, with data trading. Specifically, we propose a data trading model with risk compensation and study the evolutionary dynamics of the population using evolutionary game theory. We define $\lambda$ as the demander’s compensation share that the supplier has to bear for data quality cheating and $\eta$ as the supplier’s compensation share that the demander has to bear for data leakage. Through numerical solution and simulation, we analyze the evolutionary stable states of the population and find that the risk compensation mechanism in some data trading scenarios can limit the supply side from cheating on data quality or the demand side from leaking data. The results show that $\lambda$ and $\eta$ act asymmetrically, with $\lambda$ being able to affect both supply-side and demand-side strategies, while $\eta$ affects only the demand-side strategy. This work reveals chaos and asymmetry in data trading with risk compensation, and the proposed model and replication dynamic equations may have implications for future research. Full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, panic buying, price inflation, and the pollution of production processes led to economic and social unrest. In response to the current situation, the current research takes less account of the subjective perception of public panic buying and the lack of reference to the reality of effective governance. First, this paper uses prospect theory to portray the public’s perceived value of goods in panic buying and non-panic buying situations. Then, drawing on the experience of effective governance in China, a tripartite evolutionary game model of local government, the public and green smart supply chain enterprises is constructed under the reward and punishment mechanism of the central government. Then, this paper analyzes the strategic choices of each game player and the stability of the system equilibrium. The structure of the study suggests the following. (1) Improving local government subsidies and penalties, the cost of positive response and the probability of response can lead to an evolutionary direction where the public chooses not to panic buy and green smart supply chain enterprises choose to ensure a balance between supply and demand and increase pollution control in the production process. (2) Our study yields three effective combinations of evolutionary strategies, of which an ideal combination of evolutionary strategies exists. Non-ideal evolutionary strategy combinations can occur due to improper incentives and penalties of local governments and misallocation of limited resources. However, we find four paths that can transform the non-ideal evolutionary strategy combination into an ideal evolutionary strategy combination. (3) The central government’s reward and punishment mechanism is an important tool to stabilize the tripartite strategy, but the central government cannot achieve effective governance by replacing incentives with punishment. Full article

In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), promoting cooperative behavior is a challenging problem for mechanism designers. Cooperative actions, such as disseminating data, can seem at odds with rationality and may benefit other vehicles at a cost to oneself. Without additional mechanisms, it is expected that cooperative behavior in the population will decrease and eventually disappear. Classical game theoretical models for cooperation, such as the public goods game, predict this outcome, but they assume fixed population sizes and overlook the ecological dynamics of the interacting vehicles. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary public goods game that incorporates VANET ecological dynamics and offers new insights for promoting cooperation. Our model considers free spaces, population density, departure rates of vehicles, and randomly composed groups for each data sender. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that higher population densities and departure rates, due to minimum differences between pay-offs of vehicles, promote cooperative behavior. This feedback between ecological dynamics and evolutionary game dynamics leads to interesting results. Our proposed model demonstrates a new extension of evolutionary dynamics to vehicles of varying densities. We show that it is possible to promote cooperation in VANETs without the need for any supporting mechanisms. Future research can investigate the potential for using this model in practical settings. Full article

In the post-epidemic era, the e-commerce industry has become an important engine to promote the new round of growth in China’s economy. However, the frequent quality problems of products, such as shoddy goods and improper products in the market, not only violate the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and social and public interests, but also seriously restrict the steady and sound development of the e-commerce industry. This paper uses evolutionary game theory to build an evolutionary game model between the government, platform, and merchants, and it analyzes the stable evolution path of the game system and the key factors affecting product quality optimization under the situation of dual strategy set, and then it expands the game side strategy set into a continuous type and compares and explores the regulatory effects and quality output changes under the two situations. Then, it puts forward effective measures to improve the quality of e-commerce products. The findings are as follows: in the case of a binary strategy set, it is difficult for merchants to steadily evolve towards compliance management, while merchants’ violation management only has the willingness to improve their efforts when the scale of consumers is small. In the case of continuous policy set, government–enterprise cooperative supervision can realize the compliance operation of merchants, and the effort level and income of merchants are consistent with the optimal value in the case of dual policy set. The results show that the government and e-commerce platforms should adhere to the concept of dynamic regulation and adjust the regulatory strategies according to the different development stages of enterprises so as to not only give merchants sufficient development space, but also to maintain the healthy development environment of the market. At the same time, the government and e-commerce platforms should also avoid the binary choice of supervision or neglect, adopt flexible regulatory strategies, and maintain moderate flexible regulation so as to achieve the development trend of compliance, efforts, and profits of merchants. Full article

Construction is closely related to people’s lives and public activities. With regard to issues of energy conservation, emission reduction, and sustainable development put forth, the word “green” is increasingly used in the construction industry. Green construction is an inevitable requirement for the sustainable development of the construction industry. In addition, the government regulation mechanism is also the key to the establishment and development of green construction. Thus, on the basis of evolutionary game theory, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of developers, general contractors, and the government. Then, the evolutionary stability strategies under different conditions are discussed. Lastly, the evolution mechanism in the game process of the green construction system and the influence of relevant parameters on the evolution path of the game model are analyzed through numerical simulation. The results show that (1) when consumer preferences change, the evolutionary stability strategies also change. Consumer preference plays a positive role in the establishment and development of green construction, but a certain increase in consumer preference will lead to free-rider behavior. (2) The government’s control mechanism can not only effectively mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprises to participate but also effectively inhibit the free-rider behavior of enterprises; however, it cannot completely prevent the occurrence of free-rider behavior. (3) On the one hand, the government can advocate green consumption to promote the improvement of consumers’ green preferences; on the other hand, enterprises actively carry out technological innovation and equipment advances to enhance the likelihood that consumers will embrace green preferences to achieve the optimal ESS. This study not only provides good guidance for developers and general contractors to make optimal strategic choices under different consumers’ green preferences, but also provides a reference for the government to formulate reasonable regulatory policies. At the same time, it promotes the development of green construction and further promotes environmental protection. Full article

The negative environmental impact of the construction sector has garnered global attention, and as the “primary force” in achieving the “double carbon” target, green development is urgent, and social responsibility practices cannot be postponed. An evolutionary game model was constructed by combining the rank-dependent expected utility (RDEU) theory and the evolutionary game theory to understand the interaction mechanism between participants’ emotions and decisions, taking into account the characteristics of construction enterprises and the public regarding irrational decisions under heterogeneous emotional combinations. The study demonstrates that: (1) there is probability in the choice of rational strategies, and emotion is an irrational factor that can affect strategy choice. (2) The evolutionary trend of the strategy choice of the game subjects is altered by emotional intensity and emotional propensity. The optimism of construction enterprises inhibits their socially responsible practice, and the pessimism of the public promotes the probability of their negative strategy choice. Furthermore, moderate optimism is a safety valve for the public’s positive strategy choice. (3) The interaction of emotional states leads to a heterogeneity of strategy choices exhibited under different combinations of emotions, with the emotions of construction companies having a more dominant influence on strategy. Finally, we make some feasible recommendations for improving social responsibility practices and preventing mass incidents by boosting emotional monitoring and guidance for construction businesses and the general public. Overall, this study provides important information about how to be socially responsible, maintain good relationships with the public, and protect the environment. Full article

This paper proposes a possible mechanism for obtaining sizeable behavioral structures by simulating a network–agent dynamic on an evolutionary public good game with available social .learning. The model considers a population with a fixed number of players. In each round, the chosen players may contribute part of their value to a common pool. Then, each player may imitate the strategy of another player based on relative payoffs (whoever has the lower payoff adopts the strategy of the other player) and change his or her strategy using different exploratory variables. Relative payoffs are subject to incentives, including participation costs, but may also be subject to mutation, whose rate is sensitized by the network characteristics (social ties). The process discussed in this report is interesting and relevant across a broad range of disciplines that use game theory, including cultural evolutionary dynamics. Full article

The evolution of human cooperation is an important issue concerning social science. A deep understanding of human bounded rationality is a prerequisite for promoting collective cooperation and solving social dilemmas. Here we construct an asymmetric micro-dynamic based on bounded rationality from a micro perspective by combining behavioral economics and cognitive psychology with evolutionary game theory. Asynchronously updated Monte Carlo simulations were conducted where individuals were located on a square lattice to play a voluntary public goods game. The results showed that “free riding” behaviors can be effectively suppressed in most situations. The cooperation level can be obviously enhanced in a population comprising easily satisfied cooperators and greedy defectors. Moreover, essential conditions for the stability of the system are further discussed at the microscopic level, and altruistic behavior can be explained that an individual with lower expectations for or underestimation of a single game is more likely to cooperate. We argue that, compared to traditional approaches, the integration of interdisciplinary ideas should be taken more seriously. Full article

After the outbreak of the COVID-19, offline consumption has been significantly impacted. For the sake of safety, online consumption has become the most common manner, and this has generated e-commerce, which not only breaks the spatio-temporal or regional restrictions, but also conforms to the normal economic development needs for epidemic prevention and control. However, this new business model causes problems such as the shortage of post-sales service, false publicity, and uneven quality of live streaming anchors, seriously affecting the interests of consumers. Therefore, it is urgent to strengthen the management of the chaos of live streaming. This study focuses on exploring the problems and the behavioral strategies of stakeholders in the governance process. The paper obtained online user comments by python, and used topic clustering and subject extraction methods to dig out the problems and related multiple subjects in live streaming at first. Secondly, the theory of social preference was introduced to construct an evolutionary game model among multiple subjects, and how to guide the behavioral decision-making of multiple subjects to standardize and rationalize was studied, so as to control the problem of live streaming. Finally, simulation experiments were conducted and the results demonstrated that: (1) Compared with strengthening the reciprocal preference of the government, live streaming platforms, and consumers, changing the individual’s altruistic preference is more effective in controlling the chaos of live streaming; (2) weakening the platform’s altruistic preference for anchors is conducive to creating a good live streaming environment; and (3) changing consumers’ altruistic preference or reciprocal preference is less effective in promoting the governance of the live streaming environment. Full article

Based on a tripartite game model among suppliers of public goods, consumers, and the government, a tripartite repeated game model is constructed to analyze the evolution mechanism of which suppliers supply at low prices, consumers purchase, and the government provides incentives, and to establish the dynamics system of a repeated game. The equilibrium points of the evolutionary game are solved, and among them, the equilibrium points are found to satisfy the parameter conditions of ESS. The numerical simulation is employed to verify the impact of penalty coefficients and discount factors on the stability of strategies, which are adopted by the three players in a tripartite repeated game on public goods, and scenario analyses are conducted. The research results of this paper could provide a reference for the government, suppliers, and consumers to make rapid decisions, who are in the supply chain of public goods, especially quasi-public goods, such as coal, water, electricity, and gas, and help them to obtain stable incomes and then ensure the stable operation of the market. Full article

Anti-cancer therapies promote clonal selection of resistant cells that evade treatment. Effective therapy must be stable against the evolution of resistance. A potential strategy based on concepts from evolutionary game theory is to impair intra-tumor cooperation using genetically modified cells in which genes coding for essential growth factors have been knocked out. Such engineered cells would spread by clonal selection, driving the collapse of intra-tumor cooperation and a consequent reduction in tumor growth. Here, I test this idea in vitro in four cancer types (neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, mesothelioma, lung adenocarcinoma and multiple myeloma). A reduction, or even complete eradication, of the producer clone and the consequent reduction in cell proliferation, is achieved in some but not all cases by introducing a small fraction of non-producer cells in the population. I show that the collapse of intra-tumor cooperation depends on the cost/benefit ratio of growth factor production. When stable cooperation among producer and non-producer cells occurs, its collapse can be induced by increasing the number of growth factors available to the cells. Considerations on nonlinear dynamics in the framework of evolutionary game theory explain this as the result of perturbation of the equilibrium of a system that resembles a public goods game, in which the production of growth factors is a cooperative phenotype. Inducing collapse of intra-tumor cooperation by engineering cancer cells will require the identification of growth factors that are essential for the tumor and that have a high cost of production for the cell. Full article

Improving and maintaining cooperation are fundamental issues for any project to be time-persistent, and sanctioning free riders may be the most applied method to achieve it. However, the application of sanctions differs from one group (project or institution) to another. We propose an optional, public good game model where a randomly selected set of the free riders is punished. To this end, we introduce a parameter that establishes the portion of free riders sanctioned with the purpose to control the population state evolution in the game. This parameter modifies the phase portrait of the system, and we show that, when the parameter surpasses a threshold, the full cooperation equilibrium point becomes a stable global attractor. Hence, we demonstrate that the fractional approach improves cooperation while reducing the sanctioning cost. Full article

The combination of complex networks and game theory is one of the most suitable ways to describe the evolutionary laws of various complex systems. In order to explore the evolution of group cooperation in multiple social dilemmas, a model of a group game with a double-layer network is proposed here. Firstly, to simulate a multiplayer game under multiple identities, we combine a double-layer network and public goods game. Secondly, in order to make an individual’s strategy selection process more in line with a practical context, a new strategy learning method that incorporates individual attributes is designed here, referred to as a “public goods game with selection preferences” (PGG-SP), which makes strategic choices that are more humane and diversified. Finally, a co-evolution mechanism for strategies and topologies is introduced based on the double-layer network, which effectively explains the dynamic game process in real life. To verify the role of multiple double-layer networks with a PGG-SP, four types of double-layer networks are applied in this paper. In addition, the corresponding game results are compared between single-layer, double-layer, static, and dynamic networks. Accordingly, the results show that double-layer networks can facilitate cooperation in group games. Full article

The innovation of the biomedical engineering (BME) industry is inseparable from its cooperation with medical institutions. China has considerable medical institutions. Although private hospitals account for more than half of Chinese medical institutions, they rarely participate in biomedical engineering industry innovation. This paper analyzed the collaborative relationship among biomedical engineering enterprises, universities, research institutes, public hospitals and private hospitals through evolutionary game theory and discussed the influence of different factors on the collaborative innovation among them. A tripartite evolutionary game model is established which regards private hospitals as a stakeholder. The results show that (1) the good credit of private hospitals has a positive effect on their participation in collaborative innovation; (2) it is helpful for BME collaborative innovation to enhance the collaborative innovation ability of partners; (3) the novelty of innovation projects has an impact on BME collaborative innovation. The specific impacts depend on the revenue, cost and risk allocation ratio of innovation partners; (4) the higher the practicability of innovation projects, the more conducive to collaborative innovation. Full article