Leaders rewiring mechanism promotes cooperation in public goods game

Abstract

This paper investigates the evolutionary public goods game on a network and studies the effect of the leaders rewiring mechanism (LRM) on the evolution of cooperation. A trust mechanism is introduced to give information to the leader about the sincerity of the group. The network dynamics is driven by the LRM, allowing leaders to change their game groups if these groups are not trusted anymore. We investigate how the emergence of the network guided by LRM affects the transformation of individuals’ strategies and empowers them to cooperate. We find that LRM plays a crucial role in the emergence of cooperation, by clustering the graph into regions with high clusters of cooperators and small one of defectors. LRM enables cooperators to form compact big clusters, thus reducing exploitation by defectors.