Average abundancy of cooperation in multi-player games with random payoffs

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how random fluctuations in payoffs influence the average level of cooperation in multi-player social dilemma games, providing a first-order approximation and exploring effects of variance and covariance on cooperation.

Contribution

It introduces a first-order approximation for cooperation abundance in stochastic multi-player games and examines how payoff variability affects cooperation under weak selection.

Findings

Increasing payoff variance for defection boosts cooperation.

Decreasing payoff variance for cooperation promotes cooperation.

Covariance effects depend on group composition and game type.

Abstract

We consider interactions between players in groups of size $d\geq2$ with payoffs that not only depend on the strategies used in the group but also fluctuate at random over time. An individual can adopt either cooperation or defection as strategy and the population is updated from one-time step to the next by a birth-death event according to a Moran model. Assuming recurrent symmetric mutation and payoffs with expected values, variances, and covariances of the same small order, we derive a first-order approximation of the average abundance of cooperation in the selection-mutation equilibrium. We show that increasing the variance of any payoff for defection or decreasing the variance of any payoff for cooperation increases the average abundance of cooperation. As for the effect of the covariance between any payoff for cooperation and any payoff for defection, we show that it depends on the number of cooperators in the group associated with these payoffs. We study in particular the public goods game, the stag hunt game, and the snowdrift game, all social dilemmas based on random benefit $b$ and cost $c$ for cooperation. We show that a decrease in the scaled variance of $b$ or $c$, or an increase in their scaled covariance, makes it easier for weak selection to favor the abundance of cooperation in the stag hunt game and the snowdrift game. The same conclusion holds for the public goods game except that the covariance of $b$ has no effect on the average abundance of $C$. On the other hand, increasing the scaled mutation rate or the group size can enhance or lessen the condition for weak selection to favor the abundance of $C$.