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Main Authors: Li, Yaqiao, Narayanan, Lata, Opatrny, Jaroslav, Xu, Yi Tian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13375
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author Li, Yaqiao
Narayanan, Lata
Opatrny, Jaroslav
Xu, Yi Tian
author_facet Li, Yaqiao
Narayanan, Lata
Opatrny, Jaroslav
Xu, Yi Tian
contents Schelling games use a game-theoretic approach to study the phenomenon of residential segregation as originally modeled by Schelling. Inspired by the recent increase in the number of people and businesses preferring and promoting diversity, we propose swap games under three diversity-seeking utility functions: the binary utility of an agent is 1 if it has a neighbor of a different type, and 0 otherwise; the difference-seeking utility of an agent is equal to the number of its neighbors of a different type; the variety-seeking utility of an agent is equal to the number of types different from its own in its neighborhood. We consider four global measures of diversity: degree of integration, number of colorful edges, neighborhood variety, and evenness, and prove asymptotically tight or almost tight bounds on the price of anarchy with respect to these measures on both general graphs, as well as on cycles, cylinders, and tori that model residential neighborhoods. We complement our theoretical results with simulations of our swap games starting either from random placements of agents, or from segregated placements. Our simulation results are generally consistent with our theoretical results, showing that segregation is effectively removed when agents are diversity-seeking; however strong diversity, such as measured by neighborhood variety and evenness, is harder to achieve by our swap games.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_13375
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Diversity-seeking swap games in networks
Li, Yaqiao
Narayanan, Lata
Opatrny, Jaroslav
Xu, Yi Tian
Computer Science and Game Theory
Schelling games use a game-theoretic approach to study the phenomenon of residential segregation as originally modeled by Schelling. Inspired by the recent increase in the number of people and businesses preferring and promoting diversity, we propose swap games under three diversity-seeking utility functions: the binary utility of an agent is 1 if it has a neighbor of a different type, and 0 otherwise; the difference-seeking utility of an agent is equal to the number of its neighbors of a different type; the variety-seeking utility of an agent is equal to the number of types different from its own in its neighborhood. We consider four global measures of diversity: degree of integration, number of colorful edges, neighborhood variety, and evenness, and prove asymptotically tight or almost tight bounds on the price of anarchy with respect to these measures on both general graphs, as well as on cycles, cylinders, and tori that model residential neighborhoods. We complement our theoretical results with simulations of our swap games starting either from random placements of agents, or from segregated placements. Our simulation results are generally consistent with our theoretical results, showing that segregation is effectively removed when agents are diversity-seeking; however strong diversity, such as measured by neighborhood variety and evenness, is harder to achieve by our swap games.
title Diversity-seeking swap games in networks
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13375