The Effect of Conformists’ Behavior on Cooperation in the Spatial Public Goods Game

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effects of rational and irrational conformity behavior on the evolution of cooperation in public goods game. In general, conformist should also probably consider the difference of payoff between himself and his neighbors. Therefore, we divide the players into two categories: traditional payoff-driven players and secondly, rational conformists. Rational conformists will only update their strategy according to the conformity-driven rule when they get a higher payoff than their neighbors, whereas irrational conformists’ updating rule is the opposite. Remarkably, we find that both rational and irrational conformists enhance cooperation in the spatial public goods game. However, the differences in intensity of this positive effect between rational and irrational conformists are tremendous, and the latter promotes a higher level of cooperation to reach a much higher level and extensive positive effect.