2016/05/27 by Marco Alberto Javarone, Federico Battiston
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Artificial intelligence #Computer science #Economics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Evolutionary game theory #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #Game theory #Irrational number #Mathematical economics #Mathematics #Microeconomics #Noise (video) #Non-cooperative game #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Population #Process (computing) #Public good #Public goods game #Sequential game #Stochastic game #Strong reciprocity #nlin.AO #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2016/07/073404
published as Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment 2016 (7), 073404 · 14 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2016/05/27 · openalex publication_date 2016/07/21 · arxiv updated 2017/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In this work we aim to analyze the role of noise in the spatial public goods game, one of the most famous games in evolutionary game theory. The dynamics of this game is affected by a number of parameters and processes, namely the topology of interactions among the agents, the synergy factor, and the strategy revision phase. The latter is a process that allows agents to change their strategy. Notably, rational agents tend to imitate richer neighbors, in order to increase the probability to maximize their payoff. By implementing a stochastic revision process, it is possible to control the level of noise in the system, so that even irrational updates may occur. In particular, in this work we study the effect of noise on the macroscopic behavior of a finite structured population playing the public goods game. We consider both the case of a homogeneous population, where the noise in the system is controlled by tuning a parameter representing the level of stochasticity in the strategy revision phase, and a heterogeneous population composed of a variable proportion of rational and irrational agents. In both cases numerical investigations show that the public goods game has a very rich behavior which strongly depends on the amount of noise in the system and on the value of the synergy factor. To conclude, our study sheds a new light on the relations between the microscopic dynamics of the public goods game and its macroscopic behavior, strengthening the link between the field of evolutionary game theory and statistical physics.