The evolution of cooperation in spatial public goods game with tolerant punishment based on reputation threshold

TL;DR

This paper investigates how reputation thresholds and punishment mechanisms influence cooperation in a spatial public goods game, revealing that stricter reputation and punishment strategies significantly promote cooperative behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model combining reputation thresholds with punishment and payoff-based imitation, advancing understanding of cooperation dynamics.

Findings

Higher reputation thresholds promote cooperation

Stringent punishment environments enhance cooperative levels

Reputation and payoff integration improves imitation accuracy

Abstract

Reputation and punishment are significant guidelines for regulating individual behavior in human society, and those with a good reputation are more likely to be imitated by others. In addition, society imposes varying degrees of punishment for behaviors that harm the interests of groups with different reputations. However, conventional pairwise interaction rules and the punishment mechanism overlook this aspect. Building on this observation, this paper enhances a spatial public goods game in two key ways: 1) We set a reputation threshold and use punishment to regulate the defection behavior of players in low-reputation groups while allowing defection behavior in high-reputation game groups. 2) Differently from pairwise interaction rules, we combine reputation and payoff as the fitness of individuals to ensure that players with both high payoff and reputation have a higher chance of being imitated. Through simulations, we find that a higher reputation threshold, combined with a stringent punishment environment, can substantially enhance the level of cooperation within the population. This mechanism provides deeper insight into the widespread phenomenon of cooperation that emerges among individuals.