The interplay between reputation and heterogeneous investment enhances cooperation in spatial public goods game

In previous studies about heterogeneous investment, many researchers only focus on the monodirectional effect of reputation, but ignore the reversed influence about the heterogeneity of reputation fluctuation driven by investment. Given this, considering the interplay between reputation and heterogeneous investment, we explore the evolution of cooperation in public goods game. In detail, each player's reputation situations in different groups determine its differentiated investment amounts, and in turn, the heterogeneity of reputation fluctuation is dependent on how much it invests into each group. Furthermore, we introduce two parameters, alpha and beta, to characterize the effect degree of investment on heterogeneous reputation fluctuation and the one of reputation on heterogeneous investment, respectively. The simulation results suggest that cooperation can be boosted to some extent, especially for the larger alpha and beta, as they magnify the interplay of reputation and heterogeneous investment. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study examines the influence of the interplay between reputation and heterogeneous investment on the evolution of cooperation. The results suggest that the interplay of reputation and heterogeneous investment can boost cooperation to some extent.