Promoting cooperation by reputation-driven group formation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reputation-driven group formation mechanism in spatial public goods games, where only players with high reputation can form groups, significantly promoting cooperation.

Contribution

It proposes a novel reputation-based group formation method that enhances cooperation, emphasizing the role of reputation thresholds and memory length in the process.

Findings

Highest cooperation occurs when only pure cooperators form groups.

Longer memory length T generally promotes higher cooperation.

Reputation thresholds effectively filter players for group formation.

Abstract

In previous studies of spatial public goods game, each player is able to establish a group. However, in real life, some players cannot successfully organize groups for various reasons. In this paper, we propose a mechanism of reputation-driven group formation, in which groups can only be organized by players whose reputation reaches or exceeds a threshold. We define a player's reputation as the frequency of cooperation in the last $T$ time steps. We find that the highest cooperation level can be obtained when groups are only established by pure cooperators who always cooperate in the last $T$ time steps. Effects of the memory length $T$ on cooperation are also studied.