Simulating the Cost of Cooperation: A Recipe for Collaborative Problem-Solving

Andrea Guazzini, Mirko Duradoni, Alessandro Lazzeri and Giorgio Gronchi
Additional contact information
Andrea Guazzini: Center for the Study of Complex Dynamics (CSDC), University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, 50135 Firenze, Italy
Mirko Duradoni: Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, Via Santa Marta 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy
Alessandro Lazzeri: Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Via Girolamo Caruso 16, 56122 Pisa, Italy
Giorgio Gronchi: Center for the Study of Complex Dynamics (CSDC), University of Florence, Via di San Salvi 12, 50135 Firenze, Italy

Future Internet, 2018, vol. 10, issue 6, 1-17

Abstract: Collective problem-solving and decision-making, along with other forms of collaboration online, are central phenomena within ICT. There had been several attempts to create a system able to go beyond the passive accumulation of data. However, those systems often neglect important variables such as group size, the difficulty of the tasks, the tendency to cooperate, and the presence of selfish individuals (free riders). Given the complex relations among those variables, numerical simulations could be the ideal tool to explore such relationships. We take into account the cost of cooperation in collaborative problem solving by employing several simulated scenarios. The role of two parameters was explored: the capacity, the group’s capability to solve increasingly challenging tasks coupled with the collective knowledge of a group, and the payoff, an individual’s own benefit in terms of new knowledge acquired. The final cooperation rate is only affected by the cost of cooperation in the case of simple tasks and small communities. In contrast, the fitness of the community, the difficulty of the task, and the groups sizes interact in a non-trivial way, hence shedding some light on how to improve crowdsourcing when the cost of cooperation is high.

Keywords: group decision-making; collective intelligence; collective problem-solving; simulation study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/10/6/55/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/10/6/55/ (text/html)

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:gam:jftint:v:10:y:2018:i:6:p:55-:d:153175

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().