Effects of aspiration on public cooperation in structured populations

We introduce a deterministic win-stay-lose-shift rule into the spatial public goods game, according to which a player will change its current strategy only if its payoff is below a predefined aspiration level. Simulation results on the square lattice and scale-free network indicate that the aspiration level greatly affects the evolution of cooperation. For small multiplication factors, the frequency of cooperation increases to 0.5 as the aspiration level increases. For large multiplication factors, intermediate levels of aspiration prove optimal for the successful evolution of public cooperation. Some qualitative analyses are provided to explain the above results. Besides, we have found that there exists a ping-pong vibration of cooperation at some specific values of multiplication factors and aspiration levels. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.