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Effects of inequality on a spatial evolutionary public goods game

  • Regular Article - Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
  • Published:
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Abstract

Over the past decade, inequality has become one of the most complex and troubling challenges in the global economy. Many scientists are determined to eliminate inequality to achieve full cooperation. However, our research shows that not all inequalities hinder cooperation. In this article, we study the effects of inequality by introducing the disassortative mixing of the investment amount and enhancement factor assigned to certain individuals in the public goods game. Compared with the traditional version, we find that cooperation can be effectively promoted by aligned inequality, which means that individuals with the highest (lowest) investment capabilities contribute the greatest (lowest) investment amounts. The promotion of cooperation mainly depends on the heterogeneous contribution ability of players. Specifically, cooperators with high contribution ability can maximize collective benefits, causing cooperators with low contribution ability to form compact clusters and resist invasion by defectors. Our research indicates that the diversity of individual endowment and productivity may have a non-negligible influence on the evolution of cooperation among selfish individuals.

Graphic Abstract

The frequency of cooperation \(\rho _{c}\) as a function of the enhancement factor r for different correlation coefficients.

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Data Availability Statement

This manuscript has no associated data or the data will not be deposited. [Authors’ comment: This article has no additional data.]

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 61866039, No. 62066045), the Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province (Grant No. 2019FB083), and the Open Foundation of the Key Lab in Software Engineering of Yunnan Province (Grant No. 2020SE201).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Software, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650504, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China

    Jinzhuo Liu, Mao Peng, Yunchen Peng, Yong Li & Qing Liu

  2. The Key Laboratory for Software Engineering of Yunnan Province, Kunming, 650504, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China

    Jinzhuo Liu, Mao Peng & Qing Liu

  3. The Engineering Research Center of Cyberspace, Kunming, 650504, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China

    Jinzhuo Liu

  4. School of Artificial Intelligence, Optics, and Electronics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, People’s Republic of China

    Jinzhuo Liu & Chen Chu

  5. School of Statistics and Mathematics, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming, 650221, Yunnan, People’s Republic of China

    Chen Chu

  6. School of Cybersecurity, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoyu Li

Authors
  1. Jinzhuo Liu
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  2. Mao Peng
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  6. Xiaoyu Li
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  7. Qing Liu
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Contributions

JL and QL conceived the idea; MP, YP and YL designed the computer code and analyzed most of the data; JL and MP wrote the paper; XL contributed to refining the ideas, carrying out additional analyses; all authors discussed the results and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaoyu Li or Qing Liu.

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Liu, J., Peng, M., Peng, Y. et al. Effects of inequality on a spatial evolutionary public goods game. Eur. Phys. J. B 94, 167 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-021-00177-w

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