Promoting cooperation by punishing minority

Han-Xin Yang and Xiaojie Chen

Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2018, vol. 316, issue C, 460-466

Abstract: Punishment is an effective way to sustain cooperation among selfish individuals. In most of previous studies, objects of punishment are set to be defectors. In this paper, we propose a mechanism of punishment, in which individuals with the majority strategy will punish those with the minority strategy in a public goods game group. Both theoretical analysis and simulation show that the cooperation level can be greatly enhanced by punishing minority. For no punishment or small values of punishment fine, the fraction of cooperators continuously increases with the multiplication factor. However, for large values of punishment fine, there exists a critical value of multiplication factor, at which the fraction of cooperators suddenly jumps from 0 to 1. The density of different types of groups is also studied.

Keywords: Public goods game; Cooperation; Punishment; Majority (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:apmaco:v:316:y:2018:i:c:p:460-466

DOI: 10.1016/j.amc.2017.08.049

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