On Binary Networked Public Goods Game with Altruism
Arnab Maiti, Palash Dey

TL;DR
This paper investigates the computational complexity of finding equilibria and modifying strategies in altruistic binary networked public goods games, revealing tractability in specific network structures and highlighting the difficulty of strategic influence.
Contribution
It provides complexity results for equilibrium existence and network modification problems in BNPG games with altruism, including efficient algorithms for trees and complete graphs.
Findings
PSNE existence is NP-Complete but solvable in polynomial time for trees and complete graphs.
Network modification problems are NP-Complete, even for trees, but become easier with directed altruism networks.
Predicting player behavior is computationally easier than designing strategies to influence it.
Abstract
In the classical Binary Networked Public Goods (BNPG) game, a player can either invest in a public project or decide not to invest. Based on the decisions of all the players, each player receives a reward as per his/her utility function. However, classical models of BNPG game do not consider altruism which players often exhibit and can significantly affect equilibrium behavior. Yu et al. (2021) extended the classical BNPG game to capture the altruistic aspect of the players. We, in this paper, first study the problem of deciding the existence of a Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium (PSNE) in a BNPG game with altruism. This problem is already known to be NP-Complete. We complement this hardness result by showing that the problem admits efficient algorithms when the input network is either a tree or a complete graph. We further study the Altruistic Network Modification problem, where the task…
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Taxonomy
TopicsGame Theory and Applications · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Economic Policies and Impacts
