The evolution of cooperation in public goods games on the scale-free community network under multiple strategy-updating rules

Abstract

Most social dilemmas have public goods properties, and social networks have scale-free characteristics and community structure features. Meanwhile, due to individuals’ diverse preferences, there are individuals in the network who use different strategy-updating rules. Based on this, this research explores how cooperation evolves in scale-free community networks with public goods games, as well as the influence of multiple strategy-updating rules on cooperation evolution. Pairwise comparison rules and aspiration-driven rules are the two types of strategy-updating rules discussed here. Several simulations are displayed, along with the results of their simulations. We discover that community structure facilitates the emergence of cooperation with public goods games. Meanwhile, the enhancement factor’s value determines the relationship between the proportion of the two updating rules and the cooperation density. There is a negative relationship between the initial ratio of pairwise comparison rules and the cooperation density under a weak enhancement factor. And the initial ratio of pairwise comparison rules and the cooperation density forms a “U”-shaped relationship under a strong enhancement factor. Pairwise comparison rules seem to be more sensitive to the variance in the proportion of the two strategy-updating rules. Our findings might help us better understand the evolution of cooperation in social networks.