Enhancement of cooperation by giving high-degree neighbors more help

Abstract

In this paper, we study the effect of preferential assistance on cooperation in the donation game. Cooperators provide benefits to their neighbors at some costs. Defectors pay no cost and do not distribute any benefits. The total contribution of a cooperator is fixed and he/she distributes his/her contribution unevenly to his/her neighbors. Each individual is assigned a weight that is the power of its degree, where the exponent $\alpha$ is an adjustable parameter. The amount that cooperator $i$ contributes to a neighbor $j$ is proportional to $j$'s weight. Interestingly, we find that there exists an optimal value of $\alpha$ (which is positive), leading to the highest cooperation level. This phenomenon indicates that, to enhance cooperation, individuals could give high-degree neighbors more help, but only to a certain extent.

References in corpus (16)

• Evolutionary games on graphs
• Statistical physics of human cooperation
• Evolutionary dynamics of group interactions on structured populations: A review
• Evolutionary games on multilayer networks: A colloquium
• Dynamical Organization of Cooperation in Complex Topologies
• Punish, but not too hard: How costly punishment spreads in the spatial public goods game
• Enhancement of cooperation in highly clustered scale-free networks
• Evolution of cooperation on scale-free networks subject to error and attack
• Determinants of public cooperation in multiplex networks
• Stochastic win-stay-lose-shift strategy with dynamic aspirations in evolutionary social dilemmas
• Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation in neutral populations
• Second-order freeriding on antisocial punishment restores the effectiveness of prosocial punishment
• Similarity based cooperation and spatial segregation
• Role-separating ordering in social dilemmas controlled by topological frustration
• Community structure benefits the fixation of cooperation under strong selection
• Equilibria, information and frustration in heterogeneous network games with conflicting preferences