Public Goods Game on Complex Networks: the interplay between conformity and topology

2026-07-25

AI Summary

This study investigates how conformity bias and network topology jointly shape human cooperative behavior. By incorporating heterogeneous individual sensitivities to both payoffs and neighbors’ actions into a spatial public goods game, the authors employ multi-agent simulations grounded in complex network theory to systematically analyze the dynamics of cooperation on both regular and heterogeneous networks. The findings reveal that the effect of conformity on promoting cooperation is strongly contingent on network structure: it significantly enhances cooperation in regular networks, yet exhibits weak or even suppressive effects in heterogeneous networks. These results underscore the non-universality of interactions between social influence and network topology, offering a novel perspective on the mechanisms underlying the emergence of cooperation in real-world social systems.

Abstract

Human cooperation is a phenomenon that has been extensively studied, and to date several explanations have been proposed, from network reciprocity to behavioral mechanisms that incorporate social and cognitive aspects. In this work, we studied the combined effect of conformity and network structure on the evolution of cooperation in the spatial Public Goods Game. By assigning agents different individual sensitivities to payoffs and neighborhood behavior, we explored the cooperative dynamics of this heterogeneous population on both regular and complex topologies. Our results show how the interaction between conformity and the distinctive features of each network can lead to very different outcomes, from the promotion of cooperation in regular topologies to null or negative effects in heterogeneous networks.

Problem

• Public Goods Game
• conformity
• network topology
• cooperation
• complex networks

Innovation

• conformity
• network topology
• Public Goods Game
• cooperation evolution
• heterogeneous sensitivity