A bin packing game with cardinality constraints under the best cost rule

Abstract

We consider the bin packing problem with cardinality constraints in a non-cooperative game setting. In the game, there are a set of items with sizes between 0 and 1, and a number of bins each of which has a capacity of 1. Each bin can pack at most [Formula: see text] items, for a given integer parameter [Formula: see text]. The social cost is the number of bins used in the packing. Each item tries to be packed into one of the bins so as to minimize its cost. The selfish behaviors of the items result in some kind of equilibrium, which greatly depends on the cost rule in the game. We say a cost rule encourages sharing if for an item, compared with sharing a bin with some other items, staying in a bin alone does not decrease its cost. In this paper, we first show that for any bin packing game with cardinality constraints under an encourage-sharing cost rule, the price of anarchy of it is at least [Formula: see text]. We then propose a cost rule and show that the price of anarchy of the bin packing game under the rule is [Formula: see text] when [Formula: see text].