Environmental influences on cooperation in social dilemmas on networks

Yunya Xie, Shuhua Chang, Ming Yan, Zhipeng Zhang and Xinyu Wang

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018, vol. 492, issue C, 2027-2033

Abstract: Environmental influence on cooperation is a classical topic that is widely applicable to social interactions. Here, we introduce a realistic model which depends on both the payoff and the strategy of the environment. As the strategy of the environment rather than the neighbor is imitated with a probability, the model takes more attention on the comprehensive influence of the nearby neighbors. The simulation results show that the cooperation level can be widely enhanced for the prisoner’s dilemma game and the snowdrift game with this environment factor. In this environmental model, the mechanism of the survival of cooperators is deeply studied, and the corresponding results can be derived. Although the survival of cooperators also depends on the formation of the cooperator clusters, the enhancement of the cooperation level can be interpreted as the accumulation effect of the transformation of defection into cooperation. Interestingly, there exists a threshold of the initial fraction of the cooperators, and the cooperation increases significantly when this threshold is reached Moreover, the square cooperative cluster is stable, and robust against different levels of the noise parameter and temptation in the strategy adoption process. This work may shed light on the mechanism of cooperation in the real world.

Keywords: Social dilemmas; Cooperation; Environment; Spatial structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437117312025
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:492:y:2018:i:c:p:2027-2033

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.11.118

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().