Realistic decision-making process with memory and adaptability in evolutionary vaccination game

Of particular importance for controlling infectious diseases by voluntary vaccination is how to understand individuals' strategic vaccination behavior in social networks. Previous studies have always assumed an imitating and learning process by the Fermi's rule, however, individuals' stochastic behavior of whether to vaccinate is influenced by their intentions instead of simply imitating others. In this paper, a new strategy updating rule is proposed, demonstrating a more realistic vaccination decision-making process with memory effect and adaptability. Individuals determine whether vaccination is significant by comparing the vaccination cost and the average cost of their unvaccinated neighbors, and accordingly change their intentions to vaccinate in the next season, during which the memory effect and adaptability are taken into account. We find that the new updating rule has an extraordinary impact on the vaccination behavior of individuals, and, as a result, on the final epidemic size. It is especially noteworthy that, comparing with the traditional model, the vaccination coverage is improved and the infection size is reduced. Our results highlight that it is necessary to consider memory effect and adaptability in controlling the infectious spreading. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.