Cluster evolution in public goods game with fairness mechanism

Baojian Zhang, Zeguang Cui and Xiaohang Yue

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 532, issue C

Abstract: Defector contributes nothing but gains benefit in public goods game. This phenomenon creates an incentive for free riding and causes inefficient equilibrium in which everyone is defector. However, coexistence of cooperation and defection is pervasive for a large well-mixed population in nature society. Inspired by the fact that humans have strong but also emotional tendencies for fair play, we employ a fairness mechanism with peer punishment to solve the public goods problem of a well-mixed cluster and aim to analyze cluster evolutionary process. The process is divided into three stages. In the first stage called cluster formation, this problem can be effectively solved by same-strategy groups. The second stage is cluster extension, we utilize multiplayer game and prove that increasing fairness factor and decreasing punishment cost are two effective ways to improve cooperation. Finally, we obtain the coexistence of cooperation and defection in the third stage called boom and bust.

Keywords: Public goods game; Fairness mechanism; Punishment; Cluster evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437119310544
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:532:y:2019:i:c:s0378437119310544

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.121796

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 ().