Productive societies feature high levels of cooperation and strong connections between individuals. Public Goods Games (PGGs) are frequently used to study the development of social connections and cooperative behavior in model societies. In such games, contributions to the public good are made only by cooperators, while all players, including defectors, reap public goods benefits, which are shares of the contributions amplified by a synergy factor. Classic results of game theory show that mutual defection, as opposed to cooperation, is the Nash Equilibrium of PGGs in well-mixed populations, where each player interacts with all others. In this paper, we explore the coevolutionary dynamics of a low information public goods game on a complex network in which players adapt to their environment in order to increase individual payoffs relative to past payoffs parameterized by greediness. Players adapt by changing their strategies, either to cooperate or to defect, and by altering their social connections. We find that even if players do not know other players' strategies and connectivity, cooperation can arise and persist despite large short-term fluctuations.
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July 2017
Research Article|
July 13 2017
Public goods games on adaptive coevolutionary networks
Elgar Pichler;
Elgar Pichler
a)
1
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University
, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
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Avi M. Shapiro
Avi M. Shapiro
b)
2
Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Search for other works by this author on:
Elgar Pichler
1,a)
Avi M. Shapiro
2,b)
1
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University
, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
2
Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
a)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
b)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected]
Chaos 27, 073107 (2017)
Article history
Received:
February 20 2017
Accepted:
June 22 2017
Citation
Elgar Pichler, Avi M. Shapiro; Public goods games on adaptive coevolutionary networks. Chaos 1 July 2017; 27 (7): 073107. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4991679
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