Participation Incentives in Online Cooperative Games

TL;DR

This paper examines participation incentives in online cooperative games, identifies shortcomings in existing value-sharing mechanisms, and proposes new mechanisms that ensure fair participation and rationality under various valuation conditions.

Contribution

It introduces novel participation incentive mechanisms that satisfy key axioms and improve upon existing methods for online cooperative game value distribution.

Findings

Existing mechanisms fail to meet participation incentive axioms.

Proposed mechanisms satisfy participation and early arrival incentives.

Refined mechanisms ensure individual rationality under superadditive valuations.

Abstract

This paper studies cooperative games where coalitions are formed online and the value generated by the grand coalition must be irrevocably distributed among the players at each timestep. We investigate the fundamental issue of strategic pariticipation incentives and address these concerns by formalizing natural participation incentive axioms. Our analysis reveals that existing value-sharing mechanisms fail to meet these criteria. Consequently, we propose several new mechanisms that not only fulfill these desirable participation incentive axioms but also satisfy the early arrival incentive for general valuation functions. Additionally, we refine our mechanisms under superadditive valuations to ensure individual rationality while preserving the previously established axioms.