Evolutionary Dynamics of Reputation-Based Voluntary Prisoner's Dilemma Games

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Shen, Chen, Song, Zhao, Wang, Xinyu, Shi, Lei, Perc, Matjaž, Wang, Zhen, Tanimoto, Jun
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Shen, Chen
Song, Zhao
Wang, Xinyu
Shi, Lei
Perc, Matjaž
Wang, Zhen
Tanimoto, Jun
author_facet Shen, Chen
Song, Zhao
Wang, Xinyu
Shi, Lei
Perc, Matjaž
Wang, Zhen
Tanimoto, Jun
contents Cooperation underlies many natural and artificial systems. While voluntary participation can sustain cooperation without informational assumptions, real interactions are rarely anonymous, leaving the joint effects of participation and reputation insufficiently understood. We propose a reputation-based voluntary Prisoner's Dilemma in which agents incur a monitoring cost to inspect opponents and decide whether to exit an interaction for a fixed incentive to avoid exploitation or to default to cooperation or defection. We show that reputation-conditioned exit generates multiple coexistence pathways that sustain cooperation across population structures. In well-mixed populations, cooperation persists through stable mixed coexistence, whereas in structured populations, exit-incentive-dependent regimes emerge, including local cyclic dominance and persistent oscillations. Together, these results extend voluntary participation frameworks and underscore the role of exit-incentive design in cooperative multi-agent systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_16643
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolutionary Dynamics of Reputation-Based Voluntary Prisoner's Dilemma Games
Shen, Chen
Song, Zhao
Wang, Xinyu
Shi, Lei
Perc, Matjaž
Wang, Zhen
Tanimoto, Jun
Physics and Society
Cooperation underlies many natural and artificial systems. While voluntary participation can sustain cooperation without informational assumptions, real interactions are rarely anonymous, leaving the joint effects of participation and reputation insufficiently understood. We propose a reputation-based voluntary Prisoner's Dilemma in which agents incur a monitoring cost to inspect opponents and decide whether to exit an interaction for a fixed incentive to avoid exploitation or to default to cooperation or defection. We show that reputation-conditioned exit generates multiple coexistence pathways that sustain cooperation across population structures. In well-mixed populations, cooperation persists through stable mixed coexistence, whereas in structured populations, exit-incentive-dependent regimes emerge, including local cyclic dominance and persistent oscillations. Together, these results extend voluntary participation frameworks and underscore the role of exit-incentive design in cooperative multi-agent systems.
title Evolutionary Dynamics of Reputation-Based Voluntary Prisoner's Dilemma Games
topic Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16643