Stability in Single-Peaked Strategic Resource Selection Games

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of resource selection games with heterogeneous agents and single-peaked utilities, providing bounds for equilibrium existence across various graph structures and information settings.

Contribution

It introduces the analysis of stability in heterogeneous, single-peaked resource selection games, deriving tight bounds for equilibrium existence on different graph topologies.

Findings

Tight bounds for equilibrium existence on cycles and binary trees.

Bounds for equilibria on arbitrary graphs with limited information.

Identification of cases where conventional methods fail to prove stability.

Abstract

The strategic selection of resources by selfish agents has long been a key area of research, with Resource Selection Games and Congestion Games serving as prominent examples. In these traditional frameworks, agents choose from a set of resources, and their utility depends solely on the number of other agents utilizing the same respective resource, treating all agents as indistinguishable or anonymous. Only recently, the study of the Resource Selection Game with heterogeneous agents has begun, meaning agents have a type and the fraction of agents of their type at their resource is the basis of their decision-making. In this work, we initiate the study of the Resource Selection Game with heterogeneous agents in combination with single-peaked utility functions, as some research suggests that this may represent human decision-making in certain cases. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of the game's stability within this framework. We provide tight bounds that specify for which peak values equilibria exist across different dynamics on cycles and binary trees. On arbitrary graphs, in a setting where agents lack information about the selection of other agents, we provide tight bounds for the existence of equilibria, given that the utility function is linear on both sides of the peak. Agents possessing this information on arbitrary graphs creates the sole case where our bounds are not tight, instead, we narrow down the cases in which the game may admit equilibria and present how several conventional approaches fall short in proving stability.