Third-party arbitration and forgiving strategies increase cooperation when perception errors are common.

Humans cooperate in groups in which mutual monitoring is common, and this provides the possibility of third-party arbitration. Third-party arbitration stabilizes reciprocity in at least two ways: first, when it is accurate, it reduces the frequency of misunderstandings resulting from perception errors, and second, even when it is inaccurate, it provides a public signal that allows pairs to align their expectations about how to behave after errors occur. Here, we describe experiments that test for these two effects. We find that in an iterated, sequential Prisoner's Dilemma game with errors, players with the highest average payoffs are those who make use of third-party arbitration and who also employ forgiving strategies. The combination of these two behaviours reduces the detrimental effects of errors on reciprocity, resulting in more cooperation.

The evolution of social behaviors and risk preferences in settings with uncertainty.

Humans update their social behavior in response to past experiences and changing environments. Behavioral decisions are further complicated by uncertainty in the outcome of social interactions. Faced with uncertainty, some individuals exhibit risk aversion while others seek risk. Attitudes toward risk may depend on socioeconomic status; and individuals may update their risk preferences over time, which will feedback on their social behavior. Here, we study how uncertainty and risk preferences shape the evolution of social behaviors. We extend the game-theoretic framework for behavioral evolution to incorporate uncertainty about payoffs and variation in how individuals respond to this uncertainty. We find that different attitudes toward risk can substantially alter behavior and long-term outcomes, as individuals seek to optimize their rewards from social interactions. In a standard setting without risk, for example, defection always overtakes a well-mixed population engaged in the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, whereas risk aversion can reverse the direction of evolution, promoting cooperation over defection. When individuals update their risk preferences along with their strategic behaviors, a population can oscillate between periods dominated by risk-averse cooperators and periods of risk-seeking defectors. Our analysis provides a systematic account of how risk preferences modulate, and even coevolve with, behavior in an uncertain social world.

Pricing strategies for shared manufacturing platform considering cooperative advertising based on differential game.

Shared manufacturing is a new business form that focuses on all aspects of production and manufacturing, mainly relying on the shared manufacturing platform to achieve the optimal allocation of idle resources. For enterprises, in the process of deciding to lease idle resources, the pricing and advertising investment efficiency of the shared manufacturing platform is a valuable research issue. The shared manufacturing model in this paper consists of one manufacturer and one shared manufacturing platform, which will invest in cooperative advertising while the shared manufacturing process is completed. The cooperative advertising involves four models: the traditional cooperation model, the cost-sharing contract model, the revenue-sharing contract model, and the bilateral cost-sharing contract model. We investigate the impact of some key parameters on the prices and profits of the manufacturer and the shared manufacturing platform based on the differential game. The numerical examples demonstrate the viability of the model. Finally, we provide suggestions based on the decision-making of the manufacturer and the shared manufacturing platform under different cooperative advertising models.

Strategic decision making in live streaming e-commerce through tripartite evolutionary game analysis.

This article delves into the current popular phenomenon of live streaming e-commerce, with a specific focus on issues related to product quality and after-sales service. It constructs an evolutionary game model that encompasses three key stakeholders: e-commerce platforms, consumers, and streamers. The study conducts a thorough analysis of the interactions and strategic choices among these entities, investigating the stability of equilibrium strategy combinations within the game system and the influence of various factors on decision-making behaviors. Furthermore, the validity of the analytical conclusion is corroborated through the application of simulation analysis methods. The study finds that for the consumer, strategies such as reducing losses encountered due to quality issues under strict demands, enhancing compensation in these scenarios, and increasing benefits for maintaining stringent requirements during live streaming sessions can motivate them to adopt more stringent strategies. For the streamer, essential factors in promoting the selection of high-quality products include increasing the benefits associated with such choices and reducing the probability of quality issues, or alternatively, decreasing the gains from lower-quality selections and increasing the likelihood of encountering quality problems with these products. For the e-commerce platform, strategically adjusting the profit-sharing ratio to maintain collaborative momentum and influence the enthusiasm of both consumers and streamers is a critical strategy to avert market scenarios akin to prisoner's dilemmas and tragic outcomes. Overall, this research offers profound insights into the complex strategic evolution within the live commerce market, providing valuable guidance for interaction strategies among e-commerce platforms, consumers, and streamers. Its implications for practical decision-making optimization and strategic formulation are of significant importance.

Islands of cooperation emerge by stigmergic interactions in iterated spatial games.

This article focuses on the emergence of cooperation in societies of self-interested agents. In particular, it introduces a mechanism based on indirect-stigmergic-interactions between agents moving in an environment, to express the likeliness of finding cooperative partners. On the one hand, agents that find themselves cooperating with others emit pheromones in their current location, expressing the presence of agents willing to cooperate. On the other hand, agents that sense pheromones tend to move towards regions with a higher pheromone concentration. Results show that this mechanism leads to the emergence of spatial regions where cooperation can be effectively sustained, and in which agents can overall get better payoffs than those agents not taking into account pheromones in their choices.

Cooperation and social organization depend on weighing private and public reputations.

To avoid exploitation by defectors, people can use past experiences with others when deciding to cooperate or not ('private information'). Alternatively, people can derive others' reputation from 'public' information provided by individuals within the social network. However, public information may be aligned or misaligned with one's own private experiences and different individuals, such as 'friends' and 'enemies', may have different opinions about the reputation of others. Using evolutionary agent-based simulations, we examine how cooperation and social organization is shaped when agents (1) prioritize private or public information about others' reputation, and (2) integrate others' opinions using a friend-focused or a friend-and-enemy focused heuristic (relying on reputation information from only friends or also enemies, respectively). When agents prioritize public information and rely on friend-and-enemy heuristics, we observe polarization cycles marked by high cooperation, invasion by defectors, and subsequent population fragmentation. Prioritizing private information diminishes polarization and defector invasions, but also results in limited cooperation. Only when using friend-focused heuristics and following past experiences or the recommendation of friends create prosperous and stable populations based on cooperation. These results show how combining one's own experiences and the opinions of friends can lead to stable and large-scale cooperation and highlight the important role of following the advice of friends in the evolution of group cooperation.

Game-theoretic agent-based modelling of micro-level conflict: Evidence from the ISIS-Kurdish war.

This article delves into the dynamics of a dyadic political violence case study in Rojava, Northern Syria, focusing on the conflict between Kurdish rebels and ISIS from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019. We employ agent-based modelling and a formalisation of the conflict as an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game. The study provides a nuanced understanding of conflict dynamics in a highly volatile region, focusing on microdynamics of an intense dyadic strategic interaction between two near-equally- powered actors. The choice of using a model based on the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, though a classical approach, offers substantial insights due to its ability to model dyadic, equally-matched strategic interactions in conflict scenarios effectively. The investigation primarily reveals that shifts in territorial control are more critical than geographical or temporal factors in determining the conflict's course. Further, the study observes that the conflict is characterised by periods of predominantly one-sided violence. This pattern underscores that the distribution of attacks, and target choices are a more telling indicator of the conflict nature than specific behavioural patterns of the actors involved. Such a conclusion aligns with the strategic implications of the underlying model, which emphasises the outcome of interactions based on differing aggression levels. This research not only sheds light on the conflict in Rojava but also reaffirms the relevance of this type of game-theoretical approach in contemporary conflict analysis.

An evolutionary game-theoretic analysis of the "multi-agent co-governance" system of unfair competition on internet platforms.

The increasingly prominent issue of unfair competition on Internet platforms (IPUC) severely restricts the healthy and sustainable development of the platform economy. Based on the IPUC "multi-agent co-governance" scenario, this paper introduces stochastic disturbances and continuous strategy set to improve the classical binary deterministic evolutionary game system. The results show that after considering stochastic disturbances, the positive state corresponding to the equilibrium point (1,1) is no longer stable, and the required parameter conditions are more stringent. The IPUC "multi-agent co-governance" system under stochastic disturbances exhibits specific vulnerability. In the continuous strategy set evolutionary game system, government departments and Internet platforms can flexibly make optimal decisions based on maximizing expected returns, and strategy selection has better elasticity. Regardless of the evolutionary game scenario, maintaining the participation level of NGOs and the public above a certain threshold while increasing the penalty intensity is conducive to the evolution of the game system toward the positive state. The analysis process and conclusions provide insights and guidance for the governments to design the IPUC regulatory system and frameworks.

Regulatory mechanism of vulnerability disclosure behavior considering security crowd-testing: An evolutionary game analysis.

The security crowd-testing regulatory mechanism is a vital means to promote collaborative vulnerability disclosure. However, existing regulatory mechanisms have not considered multi-agent responsibility boundaries and stakeholders' conflicts of interest, leading to their dysfunction. Distinguishing from previous research on the motivations and constraints of ethical hacks' vulnerability disclosure behaviors from a legal perspective, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of SRCs, security researchers, and the government from a managerial perspective to propose regulatory mechanisms promoting tripartite collaborative vulnerability disclosure. The results show that the higher the initial willingness of the three parties to choose the collaborative strategy, the faster the system evolves into a stable state. Regarding the government's incentive mechanism, establishing reward and punishment mechanisms based on effective thresholds is essential. However, it is worth noting that the government has an incentive to adopt such mechanisms only if it receives sufficient regulatory benefits. To further facilitate collaborative disclosure, Security Response Centers (SRC) should establish incentive mechanisms including punishment and trust mechanisms. Additionally, publicity and training mechanisms for security researchers should be introduced to reduce their revenue from illegal participation, which promotes the healthy development of security crowd-testing. These findings contribute to improving SRCs' service quality, guiding security researchers' legal participation, enhancing the government's regulatory effectiveness, and ultimately establishing a multi-party collaborative vulnerability disclosure system.

Promoting distributed photovoltaic adoption: An evolutionary game model approach for stakeholder coordination.

Distributed photovoltaic (DPV) is a promising solution to climate change. However, the widespread adoption of DPV faces challenges, such as high upfront costs, regulatory barriers, and market uncertainty. Addressing these barriers requires coordinating the interests of stakeholders in the promotion of DPV. Therefore, this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model in a social network with the government, investment companies and residents as the main subjects and examines the influence of different subjects' behavioral strategies on the promotion of DPV under the social learning mechanism. The results show that: (1) In the game equilibrium, both the government and residents hold a positive attitude towards the promotion of DPV; (2) Companies will obtain most of the subsidies through market power and information differences, resulting in the increase of government subsidies that do not always benefit residents; (3) The increase of energy consumption and pollution prevention costs can promote companies' investment in DPV; (4) The increase of environmental protection taxes to a certain extent helps companies to take responsibility for promoting DPV, reducing the pressure on the government to promote it and increasing residents' income. This study provides insights into the sustainable development of DPV.

Migration costs and rewarding schemes in spatial public goods games.

This study explores the influence of migration costs and rewarding schemes on cooperation through the implementation of computational behavioral models in spatial public goods games. The former involves a cost for agents to migrate to a neighboring group, while the latter rewards them for remaining in the same group for multiple rounds. By analyzing these mechanisms separately and in combination, we unveil their effects on cooperative behavior. The grid-based game dynamics begins with equal size groups, and agents can adjust their contributions each round, with the option to migrate if unsatisfied. Our findings reveal that when considered separately, the rewarding scheme is not as effective in achieving full cooperation as the migration cost scheme. Combining migration costs and rewards instead yields high cooperation levels with low public goods game enhancement factors and migration probability. Our results offer valuable insights for contexts where promoting cooperative behavior is crucial, such as community engagement development and public policies.

How can the recycling of power batteries for EVs be promoted in China? A multiparty cooperative game analysis.

While electric vehicles (EVs) are developing at a high speed in China, the power battery market is facing a decommissioning peak. The problem is that the recycling situation of domestic power batteries is not ideal, partly due to neglect by consumers. By considering the recycling system, mode, and policy of China's EV power batteries, we construct a tripartite evolutionary game model of the government, consumers and EV manufacturers; analyse the stable strategy adjustment mechanisms of tripartite participation in this recycling cooperation game; and simulate the tripartite evolutionary game. The results show that when the initial willingness of the government, consumers and EV manufacturers to recycle power batteries is not strong, the government takes the lead, driving EV manufacturers and consumers to participate in power battery recycling. When the government, consumers and EV manufacturers have medium or high levels of initial willingness, the government evolves and chooses a nonregulation strategy. In addition, by simulating the impact of changes in consumer-related influencing factors on this tripartite evolutionary game, we find that subsidies for recycling power batteries are a key factor affecting consumers' strategy choices and that boosting recycling compensation for consumers can improve their enthusiasm to participate in such recycling. Therefore, to improve the recycling of power batteries for EVs, in terms of both efficiency and percentage of deployment, the Chinese government should strengthen public education on power battery recycling, further integrate informal recycling channels, and balance the distribution of profits among consumers for recycling compensation.

The economic impacts of social activism and corporate social responsibility on food fraud.

The study examines the relationship between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) investments of a food firm, an activist's incentive to target the firm to uncover and deter fraudulent behavior, and the firm's incentive to commit food fraud. Specifically, we develop a game theoretic model to analyze the strategic interaction between a food firm that decides whether to provide a credence food attribute and whether to misrepresent the quality of its product, and an activist who decides whether to monitor the firm and launch a campaign to uncover and remove false/misleading quality claims. We further examine the effect of CSR and the activist's presence on the level of quality the firm provides. We derive the conditions under which an activist will find it optimal to monitor the firm to uncover fraudulent quality claims and the firm will find it optimal to misrepresent its product quality. Analytical results show that the greater the firm's CSR investments, the less likely it is that the activist will find it optimal to monitor the firm, and the more likely it is that the firm will find it optimal to misrepresent its product quality. Results also show that the firm is more likely to misrepresent its product quality when its effectiveness in contesting the activist's campaign is relatively high, and more likely to actually provide a high-quality product when the cost of the credence attribute is relatively low.

Evolutionary Game Dynamics with Environmental Feedback in a Network with Two Communities.

Recent developments of eco-evolutionary models have shown that evolving feedbacks between behavioral strategies and the environment of game interactions, leading to changes in the underlying payoff matrix, can impact the underlying population dynamics in various manners. We propose and analyze an eco-evolutionary game dynamics model on a network with two communities such that players interact with other players in the same community and those in the opposite community at different rates. In our model, we consider two-person matrix games with pairwise interactions occurring on individual edges and assume that the environmental state depends on edges rather than on nodes or being globally shared in the population. We analytically determine the equilibria and their stability under a symmetric population structure assumption, and we also numerically study the replicator dynamics of the general model. The model shows rich dynamical behavior, such as multiple transcritical bifurcations, multistability, and anti-synchronous oscillations. Our work offers insights into understanding how the presence of community structure impacts the eco-evolutionary dynamics within and between niches.

An innovative fractional-order evolutionary game theoretical study of personal protection, quarantine, and isolation policies for combating epidemic diseases.

This study uses imposed control techniques and vaccination game theory to study disease dynamics with transitory or diminishing immunity. Our model uses the ABC fractional-order derivative mechanism to show the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as personal protection or awareness, quarantine, and isolation to simulate the essential control strategies against an infectious disease spread in an infinite and uniformly distributed population. A comprehensive evolutionary game theory study quantified the significant influence of people's vaccination choices, with government forces participating in vaccination programs to improve obligatory control measures to reduce epidemic spread. This model uses the intervention options described above as a control strategy to reduce disease prevalence in human societies. Again, our simulated results show that a combined control strategy works exquisitely when the disease spreads even faster. A sluggish dissemination rate slows an epidemic outbreak, but modest control techniques can reestablish a disease-free equilibrium. Preventive vaccination regulates the border between the three phases, while personal protection, quarantine, and isolation methods reduce disease transmission in existing places. Thus, successfully combining these three intervention measures reduces epidemic or pandemic size, as represented by line graphs and 3D surface diagrams. For the first time, we use a fractional-order derivate to display the phase-portrayed trajectory graph to show the model's dynamics if immunity wanes at a specific pace, considering various vaccination cost and effectiveness settings.

Analyzing evolutionary game theory in epidemic management: A study on social distancing and mask-wearing strategies.

When combating a respiratory disease outbreak, the effectiveness of protective measures hinges on spontaneous shifts in human behavior driven by risk perception and careful cost-benefit analysis. In this study, a novel concept has been introduced, integrating social distancing and mask-wearing strategies into a unified framework that combines evolutionary game theory with an extended classical epidemic model. To yield deeper insights into human decision-making during COVID-19, we integrate both the prevalent dilemma faced at the epidemic's onset regarding mask-wearing and social distancing practices, along with a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. We explore the often-overlooked aspect of effective mask adoption among undetected infectious individuals to evaluate the significance of source control. Both undetected and detected infectious individuals can significantly reduce the risk of infection for non-masked individuals by wearing effective facemasks. When the economical burden of mask usage becomes unsustainable in the community, promoting affordable and safe social distancing becomes vital in slowing the epidemic's progress, allowing crucial time for public health preparedness. In contrast, as the indirect expenses associated with safe social distancing escalate, affordable and effective facemask usage could be a feasible option. In our analysis, it was observed that during periods of heightened infection risk, there is a noticeable surge in public interest and dedication to complying with social distancing measures. However, its impact diminishes beyond a certain disease transmission threshold, as this strategy cannot completely eliminate the disease burden in the community. Maximum public compliance with social distancing and mask-wearing strategies can be achieved when they are affordable for the community. While implementing both strategies together could ultimately reduce the epidemic's effective reproduction number ([Formula: see text]) to below one, countries still have the flexibility to prioritize either of them, easing strictness on the other based on their socio-economic conditions.

Tripartite evolutionary game and simulation analysis of agricultural non-point source pollution control.

Agricultural non-point source pollution control (ANSPC) is a complex, long-term and dynamic environmental protection process. In order to motivate multiple subjects to participate in ANSPC, this paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of local government, village collectives and farmers, which explores the strategic choices and influencing factors of different subjects through simulation analysis. The results indicate that: There are five stable strategy points in the ANSPC game system, which can be divided into four stages based on subject interactions. Village collectives should play an intermediary role in ANSPC and try to coordinate the behaviour of different subjects. The ideal and stable evolution state is "weak supervise, positive response, and active participate", but it cannot be realized at present. The strategy selection of subjects is determined by relative net income. Providing penalties requires considering the heterogeneity of subjects, but incentives are beneficial for achieving tripartite governance. This study provides new evidence for understanding the role of multi-agency participation in agricultural non-point source pollution control, and provides theoretical guidance for the government to formulate differentiated intervention mechanisms, which is an important reference for achieving sustainable development goals.

Evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas with assortment in finite populations.

We investigate conditions for the evolution of cooperation in social dilemmas in finite populations with assortment of players by group founders and general payoff functions for cooperation and defection within groups. Using a diffusion approximation in the limit of a large population size that does not depend on the precise updating rule, we show that the first-order effect of selection on the fixation probability of cooperation when represented once can be expressed as the difference between time-averaged payoffs with respect to effective time that cooperators and defectors spend in direct competition in the different group states. Comparing this fixation probability to its value under neutrality and to the corresponding fixation probability for defection, we deduce conditions for the evolution of cooperation. We show that these conditions are generally less stringent as the level of assortment increases under a wide range of assumptions on the payoffs such as additive, synergetic or discounted benefits for cooperation, fixed cost for cooperation and threshold benefit functions. This is not necessarily the case, however, when payoffs in pairwise interactions are multiplicatively compounded within groups.

Persistence in repeated games encourages the evolution of spite.

Social behavior is divided into four types: altruism, spite, mutualism, and selfishness. The former two are costly to the actor; therefore, from the perspective of natural selection, their existence can be regarded as mysterious. One potential setup which encourages the evolution of altruism and spite is repeated interaction. Players can behave conditionally based on their opponent's previous actions in the repeated interaction. On the one hand, the retaliatory strategy (who behaves altruistically when their opponent behaved altruistically and behaves non-altruistically when the opponent player behaved non-altruistically) is likely to evolve when players choose altruistic or selfish behavior in each round. On the other hand, the anti-retaliatory strategy (who is spiteful when the opponent was not spiteful and is not spiteful when the opponent player was spiteful) is likely to evolve when players opt for spiteful or mutualistic behavior in each round. These successful conditional behaviors can be favored by natural selection. Here, we notice that information on opponent players' actions is not always available. When there is no such information, players cannot determine their behavior according to their opponent's action. By investigating the case of altruism, a previous study (Kurokawa, 2017, Mathematical Biosciences, 286, 94-103) found that persistent altruistic strategies, which choose the same action as the own previous action, are favored by natural selection. How, then, should a spiteful conditional strategy behave when the player does not know what their opponent did? By studying the repeated game, we find that persistent spiteful strategies, which choose the same action as the own previous action, are favored by natural selection. Altruism and spite differ concerning whether retaliatory or anti-retaliatory strategies are favored by natural selection; however, they are identical concerning whether persistent strategies are favored by natural selection.

WIPO initiative of transforming traditional resources and sharing rights: An evolutionary game analysis and a Chinese context.

WIPO-GRTKF specifies, for the first time, how traditional resources embodied by traditional knowledge, genetic resources, and folklore can be defined, and what the relationship between original rights, and rights arising from the transformation and utilisation of traditional resources can be understood. Committed to promoting innovation, shared benefits and balanced interests, WIPO tries to achieve a balance between preventing users from violating holders' original rights through the acquisition of patent, trademark and copyright, and incentivizing all stakeholders to transform traditional resources to improve the greater good. The document triggers a new round of disputes among interest groups over how to share rights arising from the transformation and utilisation of traditional resources. Using an evolutionary game model to simulate how holders and users transform traditional resources, and share rights, we find that when the two sides choose to cooperate to apply for transformation and give consent to use, their benefits are maximised and strategies stabilised. We suggest that in the transforming process, holders' rights and users' interests be given equal emphasis, and an autonomous and open mode combining statutory licensing, and justified utilisation of original rights be employed. We advocate for a hybrid legislative arrangement that integrates the incentive of IPRs as private rights, and the safeguard of public rights. In the dual subject system, both users and holders enjoy multiple rights in the process of protecting and transforming traditional resources. The Chinese approach to transforming traditional resources and sharing their rights will contribute to sustainable development of traditional resource industry across the globe.