Discreet investors exert greater influence on cooperation in the public goods game

Abstract

This paper studies the evolutionary process of cooperative behavior in a public goods game model with heterogeneous investment strategies in square lattices. In the proposed model, players are divided into defectors, cooperators and discreet investors. Among these, defectors do not participate in investing, discreet investors make heterogeneous investments based on the investment behavior and cooperation value of their neighbors, and cooperators invest equally in each neighbor. In real life, heterogeneous investment is often accompanied by time or economic costs. The discreet investors in this paper pay a certain price to obtain their neighbors’ investment behavior and cooperation value, which quantifies the time and economic costs of the heterogeneous investment process. The results of Monte Carlo simulation experiments in this study show that discreet investors can effectively resist the invasion of the defectors, form a stable cooperative group and expand the cooperative advantage in evolution. However, when discreet investors pay too high a price, they lose their strategic advantage. The results in this paper help us understand the role of heterogeneous investment in promoting and maintaining human social cooperation.