Cooperation in the snowdrift game on directed small-world networks under self-questioning and noisy conditions

Authored by Tian Qiu, Guang Chen, Li-Xin Zhong, Xiao-Run Wu

Date Published: 2010-12

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpc.2010.08.018

Sponsors: Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Jiangxi Provincial Educational Foundation of China Zhejiang Provincial Social Science Foundation of China

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

Cooperation in the evolutionary snowdrift game with a self-questioning updating mechanism is studied on annealed and quenched small-world networks with directed couplings. Around the payoff parameter value r = 0.5, we find a size-invariant symmetrical cooperation effect. While generally suppressing cooperation for r > 0.5 payoffs, rewired networks facilitated cooperative behavior for r < 0.5. Fair amounts of noise were found to break the observed symmetry and further weaken cooperation at relatively large values of r. However, in the absence of noise, the self-questioning mechanism recovers symmetrical behavior and elevates altruism even under large-reward conditions. Our results suggest that an updating mechanism of this type is necessary to stabilize cooperation in a spatially structured environment which is otherwise detrimental to cooperative behavior, especially at high cost-to-benefit ratios. Additionally, we employ component and local stability analyses to better understand the nature of the manifested dynamics. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Tags

Agent-based model networks Evolution of cooperation Small-world Monte Carlo simulation Snowdrift game