Social selection of game organizers promotes cooperation in spatial public goods games

¹ School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University - Beijing 100191, China
² School of Electronic and Control Engineering, Chang'an University - Xi'an 710064, China
³ Evolution and Ecology Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Schlossplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
⁴ Center for Systems and Control, State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, College of Engineering, Peking University - Beijing 100871, China

Received: 10 March 2013
Accepted: 29 May 2013

Abstract

Inspired by the fact that opportunities in reality are heterogeneous for individuals due to social selection, we propose an evolutionary public goods game model considering the social selection of game organizers occurring on a square lattice. We introduce a simple rule that, depending on the value of a single parameter μ, influences the selection of players that are considered as potential game organizers. For positive μ players with a high payoff will be considered more likely. Setting μ equal to zero returns the random selection of game organizers. We find that increasing the probability of selecting the wealthier individuals as game organizers can effectively promote cooperation. We show that the promotion of cooperation attributes to the dominance of the clusters of cooperative organizers in the population by investigating the evolution of spatial patterns.