Evolution of cooperation in multilevel public goods games with community structures

Abstract

In a community-structured population, public goods games (PGG) occur both within and between communities. Such type of PGG is referred as multilevel public goods games (MPGG). We propose a minimalist evolutionary model of the MPGG and analytically study the evolution of cooperation. We demonstrate that in the case of sufficiently large community size and community number, if the imitation strength within community is weak, i.e., an individual imitates another one in the same community almost randomly, cooperation as well as punishment are more abundant than defection in the long run; if the imitation strength between communities is strong, i.e., the more successful strategy in two individuals from distinct communities is always imitated, cooperation and punishment are also more abundant. However, when both of the two imitation intensities are strong, defection becomes the most abundant strategy in the population. Our model provides insight into the investigation of the large-scale cooperation in public social dilemma among contemporary communities.

6 pages, 4 figures, Accepted by EPL

References in corpus (6)

• Community structure in social and biological networks
• Modularity and community structure in networks
• Phase transitions and volunteering in spatial public goods games
• Coevolutionary Dynamics: From Finite to Infinite Populations
• Universality of weak selection
• Mutation-selection equilibrium in games with multiple strategies

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Evolutionary dynamics of group interactions on structured populations: A review
• Probabilistic interconnection between interdependent networks promotes cooperation in the public goods game
• Community structure benefits the fixation of cooperation under strong selection
• Multiple learning mechanisms promote cooperation in public goods games with project selection
• The rules of multiplayer cooperation in networks of communities