Strategy selection in networked evolutionary games: Structural effect and the evolution of cooperation

Abstract

Networked evolutionary games provide an appropriate tool for investigating competition and diffusion of behavioral traits in structured biological and social populations. A core challenge in networked evolutionary game theory is the strategy selection problem: Given several strategies, which one is favored by the population? This chapter is to explore and analyze the strategy selection problem in several typical evolutionary dynamic models of networked games. In detail, firstly the concept of networked games is introduced together with several typical evolutionary dynamics models, including the birth-death process, the death-birth process, and the imitation dynamics. Then, several results of strategy selection conditions are reported for evolutionary dynamics of both two-player multi-strategy games and multi-player two-strategy games on networks. Moreover, these results are applied to the prisoner’s dilemma game, the volunteer’s dilemma game, and the public goods game to investigate the cooperation conditions in networked populations. The main aim of this chapter is to characterize the effect of interacting networks on strategy selection and more specifically on the evolution of cooperation.