Game-theoretic Study Research Articles

Catalytic evolution of cooperation in a population with behavioral bimodality.

The remarkable adaptability of humans in response to complex environments is often demonstrated by the context-dependent adoption of different behavioral modes. However, the existing game-theoretic studies mostly focus on the single-mode assumption, and the impact of this behavioral multimodality on the evolution of cooperation remains largely unknown. Here, we study how cooperation evolves in a population with two behavioral modes. Specifically, we incorporate Q-learning and Tit-for-Tat (TFT) rules into our toy model and investigate the impact of the mode mixture on the evolution of cooperation. While players in a Q-learning mode aim to maximize their accumulated payoffs, players within a TFT mode repeat what their neighbors have done to them. In a structured mixing implementation where the updating rule is fixed for each individual, we find that the mode mixture greatly promotes the overall cooperation prevalence. The promotion is even more significant in the probabilistic mixing, where players randomly select one of the two rules at each step. Finally, this promotion is robust when players adaptively choose the two modes by a real-time comparison. In all three scenarios, players within the Q-learning mode act as catalyzers that turn the TFT players to be more cooperative and as a result drive the whole population to be highly cooperative. The analysis of Q-tables explains the underlying mechanism of cooperation promotion, which captures the "psychological evolution" in the players' minds. Our study indicates that the variety of behavioral modes is non-negligible and could be crucial to clarify the emergence of cooperation in the real world.

The futility of economic sanctions in a globalized and interdependent world: a data-driven game theoretical study

Economic openness and globalization are under rising pressure from the proliferation of economic sanctions over the past decades. Data-driven evidence is urgently needed to inform the heated debates about the effectiveness of various sanctions and counter-sanction measures. In this research, we provide a game theoretical framework to model the interplays between the sanction sender and target at different stages of political conflicts. Using real-world international trade data, our game-theoretical framework assesses each country’s capability of and vulnerability to economic sanctions and quantifies the feasibility and effectiveness of different counter-sanction measures. Our findings suggest that expanded international trade creates the potential to weaponize economic interdependence for giant economies, imbalanced trade relationships with which is the main source of sanction risk for vulnerable economies. Complete decoupling from these highly capable countries is a costly and ineffective strategy to combat economic sanctions. Bloc-type collective retaliation against the common adversary can be effective under certain scenarios but provides little benefit for major contributors in the bloc, making it impractical in addressing real-world conflicts. Promoting cooperation and dialogue is the ultimate solution to maintaining economic and political stability and security.

An innovative fractional-order evolutionary game theoretical study of personal protection, quarantine, and isolation policies for combating epidemic diseases

This study uses imposed control techniques and vaccination game theory to study disease dynamics with transitory or diminishing immunity. Our model uses the ABC fractional-order derivative mechanism to show the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as personal protection or awareness, quarantine, and isolation to simulate the essential control strategies against an infectious disease spread in an infinite and uniformly distributed population. A comprehensive evolutionary game theory study quantified the significant influence of people’s vaccination choices, with government forces participating in vaccination programs to improve obligatory control measures to reduce epidemic spread. This model uses the intervention options described above as a control strategy to reduce disease prevalence in human societies. Again, our simulated results show that a combined control strategy works exquisitely when the disease spreads even faster. A sluggish dissemination rate slows an epidemic outbreak, but modest control techniques can reestablish a disease-free equilibrium. Preventive vaccination regulates the border between the three phases, while personal protection, quarantine, and isolation methods reduce disease transmission in existing places. Thus, successfully combining these three intervention measures reduces epidemic or pandemic size, as represented by line graphs and 3D surface diagrams. For the first time, we use a fractional-order derivate to display the phase-portrayed trajectory graph to show the model’s dynamics if immunity wanes at a specific pace, considering various vaccination cost and effectiveness settings.

The opportunities and challenges of crisis cartel during demand disruptions: A game theoretic study

AbstractCrisis cartel refers to the collaboration between organisations during unprecedented conditions to counter the effect of disruption during an economic crisis. Despite its prevalence, scholarly attention to this phenomenon remains scant. Employing a dual‐channel framework involving manufacturers, online retailers (ORs) and traditional brick‐and‐mortar retailers (BMRs), the authors scrutinised the efficacy of crisis cartels in mitigating the impact of negative demand disruptions. Three distinct game theoretic frameworks were applied to model the interactive dynamics between the supply chain partners, namely, the horizontal Nash game, the Stackelberg game and the collusion game. It was observed that, during disruption under crisis cartels, the optimal price and profit of both the downstream channel partners increased, whereas the optimal order quantity decreased. Manufacturers and consumers are worse off in terms of profit and consumer surplus, respectively, during the crisis cartel engagement between BMR and OR. Nonetheless, a crisis cartel emerged as a potential solution to address negative demand disruptions. In evaluating post‐disruption cartels, the study finds the necessity of regulating crisis cartels. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers, market regulators and practitioners, suggesting the need for strategic regulatory adjustments to effectively manage disruptions through the prudent utilisation of crisis cartel as a proactive management tool. The study expands existing theory by providing novel insights into the strategic interactions and dynamics within collaborative responses to demand disruptions, thus offering a pioneering approach to crisis management research.

Bilateral shock effect and alleviation strategy: a game-theoretical study in international medical devices supply chain in the pandemic context

Bilateral shock effect and alleviation strategy: a game-theoretical study in international medical devices supply chain in the pandemic context

Evaluating Mechanism and Related Axiomatic Results under Multiple Considerations

Under many interactive environments in the real world, there is often a need to evaluate the minimization effects and subsequent allocation outcomes derived from these interactions under multiple considerations. For instance, in the context of product sales, it is necessary to evaluate how to minimize the manufacturing costs of various producing factors, and sometimes, from a holistic perspective, it may even be necessary to evaluate situations with minimal sales benefits. On the other hand, in order to evaluate related effects derived from interactions and subsequent allocation outcomes, many game-theoretical studies are based on interactive models to formulate evaluating mechanisms, and then they apply axiomatic processes to analyze the rationality of these mechanisms. Therefore, this study first proposes a mechanism for evaluating the minimization effects and subsequent allocation outcomes under multiple considerations. Additionally, considering that different environmental impacts result from varying participation factors, this study also presents several weighted derivatives based on participation factors and their behaviors. Concurrently, we utilize axiomatic results to demonstrate the mathematical correctness and practicality for these evaluating mechanisms.

Game-theoretical study of military–civilian collaborative innovation in the context of four-party participation

PurposeIn the context of constructing an integrated national strategic system, collaborative innovation among enterprises is the current social focus. Therefore, in order to find the interest relationship between multiple game subjects, to explore the influencing factors of collaborative innovation of civil-military integration enterprises. This paper constructs a collaborative innovation mechanism for military–civilian integration involving four game subjects (military enterprises, private enterprises, local governments, and science and technology intermediaries). It aims to solve and reveal the evolutionary game relationship among the four parties.Design/methodology/approachTo explore the mechanism of military–civilian collaborative innovation involving four players, this study employs game theory and constructs an evolutionary game model for collaborative innovation with the participation of military enterprises, civilian enterprises, local governments, and technology intermediaries. The model reveals the evolutionary game patterns among these four entities, analyzes the impact of various parameters on the evolutionary process of the game system, and numerical simulation is used to show these changes more specifically.FindingsThe research findings demonstrate that active government subsidies promote cooperation throughout the system. Moreover, increasing the input-output ratio of research and development (R&D), the rate of technological spillovers, and the R&D investment of civilian enterprises all facilitate the tendency toward cooperation within the system. However, when the government chooses to actively provide subsidies, increasing R&D investment in military enterprises may hinder the tendency toward cooperation. Furthermore, central transfer payments, government punishment from the central government, and an increase in the information conversion rate of technology intermediaries may suppress the rate of cooperation within the system.Originality/valueMost of the previous studies on the collaborative innovation of military–civilian integration have been tripartite game models between military enterprises, private enterprises, and local governments. In contrast, this study adds science and technology intermediaries on this basis, reveals the evolution mechanism of collaborative innovation of civil-military integration enterprises from the perspective of four-party participation, and analyzes the factors influencing the cooperation of the whole system. The conclusion of this study not only enriches the collaborative innovation evolution mechanism of military–civilian integration enterprises from the perspective of multiple agents but also provides practical guidance for the innovation-driven development of military–civilian integration enterprises.

How do solar photovoltaic and wind power promote the joint poverty alleviation and clean energy development: An evolutionary game theoretic study

How do solar photovoltaic and wind power promote the joint poverty alleviation and clean energy development: An evolutionary game theoretic study

Game theory in biology: 50 years and onwards.

Game theory in biology gained prominence 50 years ago, when Maynard Smith & Price formulated the concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS). Their aim was to explain why conflicts between animals of the same species usually are of a 'limited war' type, not causing serious injury. They emphasized that game theory is an alternative to previous ideas about group selection, which were used by ethologists to explain limited aggression. Subsequently, the ESS concept was applied to many phenomena with frequency dependence in the evolutionary success of strategies, including sex allocation, alternative mating types, contest behaviour and signalling, cooperation, and parental care. Both the analyses of signalling and cooperation were inspired by similar problems in economics and attracted much attention in biology. Here we give a perspective on which of the ambitions in the field have been achieved, with a focus on contest behaviour and cooperation. We evaluate whether the game-theoretical study of the evolution of cooperation has measured up to expectations in explaining the behaviour of non-human animals. We also point to potentially fruitful directions for the field, and emphasize the importance of incorporating realistic behavioural mechanisms into models. This article is part of the theme issue 'Half a century of evolutionary games: a synthesis of theory, application and future directions'.

Facilitating developments of solar photovoltaic power and offshore wind power to achieve carbon neutralization: an evolutionary game theoretic study.

This paper aims at facilitating the developments of solar photovoltaic (PV) power and wind power generations to reduce carbon emission and achieve the carbon neutralization. The main novelty of this study is developing a new partnership comprised by the green energy investment company (GEIC), solar power plant (SPP), and offshore wind power plant (OWPP) and analyzing the impacts of typical factors on the coordinated development of SPP and OWPP based on the evolutionary game theoretical method. By using a tripartite evolutionary game model, the stability analysis of equilibrium strategy is carried out. The simulation results show that stable states could be realized under different partnerships. Impact investigation results of typical influential factors on all participants indicate that longer annual operation time, higher price of electricity sold to the power grid, and larger government subsidy will lead to more incomes for the SPP and OWPP, which will strengthen the participation willingness of all participants. For this study, the on-grid price of the SPP should be greater than 0.054 $/kWh. A reasonable investment ratio of the SPP and OWPP is the guarantee for the smooth development of the PPP project, which is suggested to be 4:6 in this study. The results of the current study have certain reference value for the policy and strategy formulations for facilitating the developments of solar PV power and offshore wind power generations.

A game theoretic approach to study the impact of transportation policies on the competition between transit and private car in the urban context

This paper proposes a spatial gaming model to characterize the mode choice behavior of travelers on a corridor connecting a suburban neighborhood to the central business district. Previous game theoretic studies typically incorporate a discrete choice model into the gaming structure to observe travelers’ mode choice behavior. The novelty of the proposed model revolves around incorporating parking operator into the gaming structure. We also present a model extension accounting for the heterogeneity in travelers’ income. The parking operator and transit agency, as the two players of the game, seek to obtain a greater market share by controlling their prices. The nature of the transit agency as a (pseudo) public authority is modeled by letting the player maximize a weighted sum of profit and consumer surplus. The private parking operator, on the other hand, is a profit maximizer. With the out-of-pocket cost, generalized travel time, and disutilities other than time in the utility function of travelers, this gaming model enable us to evaluate the impact on auto-transit competition of a wide range of urban policies. A corridor in Isfahan, Iran is considered to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model. Eight travel demand management policies are examined. We see that restrictive policies (e.g., cordon pricing) typically reduce the total demand while encouraging policies (e.g., improving transit access time by integrating transit with a bike-sharing system) increase it. The most effective policies are found to be hybrid policies such as increasing auto travel time coupled with lowering transit in-vehicle travel time.

Evolutionary game theoretic study on the coordinated development of solar power and coal-fired thermal power under the background of carbon neutral

In recent years, China has been promoting the process of carbon neutral by establishing carbon exchanges (CEs) and implementing relevant carbon emission reward and punishment policies. This study proposes a partnership of the CE, solar power plant (SPP) and coal-fired thermal power plant (TPP). Based on the tripartite evolutionary game model and current policies of China, the evolutionary processes are simulated and discussed. The results reveal that stable states can be achieved under different partnership modes. Effect evaluation results of typical parameters on the three participants show that on the premise of ensuring the participations of CE and SPP, properly reducing the prices of carbon emission share sold to the TPP will strengthen the participation willingness of TPP. The relatively reasonable selling price ranges of carbon emission share of the CE and SPP sold to the TPP are 6.0∼6.2 $/t and 5.3∼5.5 $/t, respectively. Higher zero carbon emission reward and higher carbon tax can strengthen the participation willingness of TPP and make the TPP achieve the carbon neutral. This study can provide a reference for the government and related industries to promote the carbon neutral development as well as the coordinated development of solar power and coal-fired thermal power.

Countervailing effect and mitigation policy: A game-theoretical study in dual international competing photovoltaic supply chains

As the world trade conflict intensifies in the photovoltaic (PV) industry recently, it would be important and timely to investigate the impact of the countervailing measure on the global PV supply chains and the non-conventional trade policy to mitigate the worsening trade effect. A simplified dual international competing PV supply chain system is developed to formulate supply chain game-theoretical models for the investigation. It is found that export subsidy (ES) scenario creates the highest total demands, supply chain profits and social welfare but at the cost of the importing country before it escalates to the most serious countervailing (CD) scenario. The key findings echo the classical trade conflict studies that any unfair trade policy will benefit only the country exercising the policy and will eventually lead to escalation of the trade conflict and bring economic damages to the trading stakeholders. A theoretical policy analysis is conducted to explore the impact on the supply chain when the export subsidizing country shares its economic gains with the importing country who might be planning to levy the countervailing duty on the imported solar product. The finding shows the gain sharing policy is possible to offset the economic loss and hostility of the importing country but still create more economic gains for the export subsidizing country. The gain sharing concept, though still in its theoretical phase, provides a more sustainable policy than the conventional retaliation approach which hinders the global solar supply chain growth, and prolongs the current head-on trade conflict between largest world economies.

Cooperative reliability allocation in network flow problems considering greenhouse gas emissions: Optical fiber networks structure

The design of network utilities which share resources or infrastructural elements, and which aim for cleaner transmission processes, involves many decision-making issues. These utilities can best be designed with regard to the mean of various maximum-flow models, while considering network reliability as a quality factor. The development of such innovative interconnectivity within industrial domains including information and communication technology (ICT) results in synergistic genesis and increased sustainability, creating an interdependent network of multi-industrial actors. In multiple-owner network utilities, various industries control edges and vertices within infrastructural networks. Network parameters differ widely in many real-world problems; engineering and designing a reliable flow can be as important as maximizing network flow while remaining compatible with environmental conditions. A key question, therefore, is how independent industry owners can collaborate symbiotically to implement a maximum green reliable flow (MGRF), one which decreases greenhouse gases (GHGs) while maximizing network worth. This paper addresses this question by providing a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model (MINLP) for multi-ownership network utility issues under budgetary conditions and constraints, and with permissible GHG emission consideration. Penalty factors for GHG emissions are also examined. Subsequently, an analysis is performed on the effectiveness of acceptable reliability levels and GHG fines payable for various emissions permit levels. These methods and analyses are then reviewed in a multi-faceted study of three main service industries that use fiber-optic networks, along with the results of collaborative outputs and relevant managerial insights. Additionally, several collaborative revenue-sharing methods are analyzed, based on game theoretical studies in real-world situations.

Buyer’s strategic demand information sharing with an upstream echelon for entry promotion

Nowadays, because of the prevalence of information technology, the question of whether or not a firm should share various information vertically with outside firms constituting a supply chain has become a critical issue. Given this environmental change, this paper investigates the information sharing problem of whether a buyer purchasing products from a supplier should disclose its demand information in a noncooperative game setting. To date, a number of game-theoretic studies have shown that the optimal strategy for the buyer pursuing only its own profit is to disclose no demand information, because information disclosure causes a portion of the profit to be drained vertically from the buyer to the supplier. Contrary to this conventional insight in the literature, we demonstrate that the buyer can increase its own profit by fully disclosing information when there exists not only an incumbent supplier currently operating, but also a potential alternative supplier who waits for the chance to enter the upstream market. This finding means that the well-known result in the information sharing game in a supply chain can be reversed when there is an entry threat at the upstream supplier level. This result provides the practical implication that a buyer in a supply chain can strategically reveal demand information, which is seemingly disadvantageous to the buyer, to improve its profit through promoting the entry of another supplier as an alternative source of products. Consequently, we gain managerial insights that differ significantly from existing ones, which is the unique contribution of this study.

Impact of Income Inequality on Urban Air Quality: A Game Theoretical and Empirical Study in China.

Income inequality and environmental pollution are of great concern in China. It is important to better understand whether the narrowing of income inequality and environmental improvement contradict each other. The study aims to investigate the linkage between income inequality and environmental pollution. To illustrate the interplay between different income groups on environmental issues, we apply a mixed-strategy game. Based on the game-theoretic analytical result, the probability of residents supporting clean energy and environmental protection decreases as income inequality widens and increases as inequality narrows. This empirical study is based on the proportion of coal consumption and urban air pollution data from 113 key environmental protection cities and regions in China. The air quality data are from the National Environmental Air Quality Monitoring Network published in the China Statistical Yearbook from 2014–2018. Convincing results show that regions with higher income inequality suffer severe smog and related pollution and that economies with narrow income disparity experience significant improvements in smog and pollution control, with the expansion of the proportion of clean energy use. The results also provide no evidence of the impact of per capita income on pollution. We studied the relationship between individuals of different wealth levels within an economy, within a repeated-game setting. The finding suggests that the distribution of growth impacts pollution. Imposing higher taxes on air polluters while transferring the revenue to the lower-income group is suggested.

Resource allocation in tragedy of the commons game in plants for belowground competition

The tragedy of the commons (TOC) has been well known since it was proposed and has been widely applied not only to human society but also to many taxa. An increasing number of studies have focused on TOC in belowground competition in plants. In the presence of neighbors, plants overproduce roots to acquire more nutrients than their competitors, resulting in a reduction in reproductive yield. Game-theoretic studies on TOC in plants usually consider the amount of root biomass as a strategy and do not consider the growth of plants. However, root volume is considered an outcome of the decision-making of plants on whether they allocate more resources to the root. In this study, we incorporated resource allocation and growth dynamics into the TOC game in plants and explored the evolutionarily stable resource allocation strategy in the presence of neighbors. We demonstrated that TOC generally occurs when fitness per individual is always reduced because of the competitive response. However, the overproliferation of roots, which is emphasized as an indicator of TOC, did not necessarily occur, or was sometimes difficult to detect when fitness is largely or completely determined by root biomass. This result suggests the importance of careful observation for examining whether plant species engage in a TOC game

A picture of regret: An empirical investigation of post-Brexit referendum survey data

Whilst the properties of decision regret have been widely explored in experimental and game theoretic studies, the empirical features of regret from large-scale ‘binary decision’ national events in practice have garnered less scrutiny. This study is an empirical investigation of novel survey data reporting ‘Brexit’ voting choices and expressions of a desire to change voting choices post-referendum. We investigate if Leave voters are more or less likely to express a change to their binary referendum vote choice than those who voted Remain or abstained and then identify the particular characteristics of those who regret their vote choice. A large-scale pan-European survey is used to capture citizens’ perceptions of the European Union containing 17,147 interviews of adults from 15 EU member states. Using responses from UK citizens ( n = 1500), focus is directed to the vote choice for the ‘Brexit’ referendum and the corresponding choice if the referendum were held ‘today’. Probit regression estimation identifies the key differences in the characteristics of those who expressed regret by indicating a desire to change voting choices. Results show that knowledge of EU funding policies, permanence of residential location, population size of the local area, educational attainment, employment status and income are key drivers for regretting the referendum voting decision.

Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior in Sustainability Reporting of Institutions of Higher Educatio

Identity theory (Ashford & Mael, 1989) is a common theoretical frame used in past studies on unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Scholars assumed that organizational identification is a key factor driving permanent and temporary employees to engage in UPB. We extend this framework by integrating accountability theorization and identity theory to propose that individual perceived accountability (operationalized as personal obligation) may provide additional explanation of variance in UPB beyond organizational identification, especially for temporarily employees with a likely weak OI. We designed two studies - a 320-student-participant game theoretic experimental study and a 251-participant survey study - to test the influence of employment status (temporary vs. permanent), employee task role (preparer vs. reviewer), and interpersonal trust (chat vs. no chat) on employees’ engagement in UPB. Findings support an interacting influence of employment status and interpersonal trust building situations on employees’ UPB engagement. Interpersonal trust moderated the relationship between PO and UPB.

Contingent or stable dual sourcing? The preferences of manufacturers and suppliers under supply disruption and competition

ABSTRACT Manufacturers will adopt different strategies to deal with the occurrence of supply disruptions. In this paper, we conduct an analytical game-theoretical study to consider a supply chain with two suppliers (a reliable supplier and an unreliable supplier) and two manufacturers (manufacturers 1 and 2). Manufacturer 2 only orders products from the reliable supplier (Supplier R), while Manufacturer 1 can choose one of the two purchasing strategies: ‘contingent dual sourcing’ or ‘stable dual sourcing’. We study the optimal purchasing strategy of Manufacturer 1 and Supplier R under supply disruptions and competition. We find that Manufacturer 1 prefers the ‘stable dual sourcing’ strategy only if the proportion of order quantity from the unreliable supplier and the potential market size are relatively large, and Supplier R prefers the ‘contingent dual sourcing’ strategy only if the proportion of order quantity from the unreliable supplier is large, the potential market size and disruption probability is not too large.