Cooperation dynamics in multi-issue repeated social dilemma games with correlated strategy

• Published in: Physical review. E 2024-08, Vol.110 (2-1), p.024307, Article 024307
• Main Authors: Quan, Ji, Cui, Shengjin, Wang, Xianjia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cooperative Behavior; Game Theory; Models, Theoretical
• ISSN: 2470-0045; 2470-0053; 2470-0053
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.110.024307

In the real world, individuals are often involved in collaboration on multiple issues, and these issues may interact with each other. Given the complexity of the interaction, we establish a multi-issue repeated game model, in which individuals participate in multiple social dilemma games simultaneously and repeatedly, and strategies in different issue games are correlated and reactive. We explore the cooperation dynamics of strategies in the population from a multiobjective perspective, in which an individual's preference for each issue is described by a weight vector, and heterogeneous preferences of individuals in the population are also considered. Through simulations on two-issue games, we find that compared to the uncorrelated case, the correlated strategy can significantly promote cooperation in both games regardless of which issue players prefer. Under the condition of homogeneous preference, an increase in the payoff weight of a given issue decreases the level of cooperation in that issue, and the optimal condition to sustain cooperation to the maximum extent is when the payoff weights of all issues are equal. Moreover, under the condition of heterogeneous preference, there exists an optimal proportion of players with different preferences under which the cooperation rate can reach its highest level in the population. This work highlights individual trade-offs on different issues when engaging in multiple games simultaneously and further enriches the research of evolutionary games from a multiobjective and correlated strategy perspective.