How good is the Shapley value-based approach to the influence maximization problem?

TL;DR

This paper critically assesses the effectiveness of Shapley value-based methods for influence maximization in networks, highlighting their strengths and limitations through comprehensive evaluation.

Contribution

It provides the first thorough performance assessment of Shapley value-based influence maximization approaches in network diffusion.

Findings

Shapley value methods show promise but have limitations in large networks.

Performance varies significantly depending on network structure.

The study offers insights into when and how Shapley-based approaches are effective.

Abstract

The Shapley value has been recently advocated as a method to choose the seed nodes for the process of information diffusion. Intuitively, since the Shapley value evaluates the average marginal contribution of a player to the coalitional game, it can be used in the network context to evaluate the marginal contribution of a node in the process of information diffusion given various groups of already 'infected' nodes. Although the above direction of research seems promising, the current liter- ature is missing a throughout assessment of its performance. The aim of this work is to provide such an assessment of the existing Shapley value-based approaches to information diffusion.