A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Social Impact of Connected and Automated Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper models the social-mobility dilemma of connected and automated vehicles using game theory, revealing it resembles the Prisoner's dilemma and proposing solutions to promote socially beneficial travel behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a game-theoretic framework for analyzing CAV deployment impacts and proposes mechanisms to incentivize socially optimal travel choices.

Findings

The game is equivalent to the Prisoner's dilemma.

Incentive mechanisms can promote non-CAV travel.

As the number of players increases, incentives for non-CAV travel diminish.

Abstract

In this paper, we address the much-anticipated deployment of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) in society by modeling and analyzing the social-mobility dilemma in a game-theoretic approach. We formulate this dilemma as a normal-form game of players making a binary decision: whether to travel with a CAV (CAV travel) or not (non-CAV travel) and by constructing an intuitive payoff function inspired by the socially beneficial outcomes of a mobility system consisting of CAVs. We show that the game is equivalent to the Prisoner's dilemma, which implies that the rational collective decision is the opposite of the socially optimum. We present two different solutions to tackle this phenomenon: one with a preference structure and the other with institutional arrangements. In the first approach, we implement a social mechanism that incentivizes players to non-CAV travel and derive a lower bound on the players that ensures an equilibrium of non-CAV travel. In the second approach, we investigate the possibility of players bargaining to create an institution that enforces non-CAV travel and show that as the number of players increases, the incentive ratio of non-CAV travel over CAV travel tends to zero. We conclude by showcasing the last result with a numerical study.