Reciprocal rewards promote the evolution of cooperation in spatial prisoner's dilemma game

Abstract

To investigate the incentive mechanisms of cooperation, we propose an other-regarding preference based reciprocal rewarding mechanism by incorporating the dynamic adjustment of link weight into the spatial prisoner's dilemma game. Under the influence of other-regarding preference, players are willing to sacrifice personal payoff to reward the cooperative neighbor who has the greatest link weight. The reciprocal reward is dynamically adjusted according to the adaptive adjustment of link weight and the intensity of other-regarding preference. Extensive simulations reveal that the proposed rewarding mechanism significantly promotes the evolution of cooperation. Both the dynamic adjustment of link weight and the other-regarding preference impact factor play an essential role in the emergence of cooperative behavior. To further validate the above outcome, the evolution of cooperators' density and the alteration of average payoff and fitness are explored in a microscopic perspective.