Participation Incentives in Online Cooperative Games

2025-02-27

AI Summary

This paper addresses the challenge of incentivizing strategic participation by players in online cooperative games where coalitions form dynamically and payoffs must be irrevocably allocated each round. Existing allocation mechanisms fail to simultaneously guarantee early-arrival incentive and individual rationality. Method: We first establish, for the first time, a formal axiomatization of participation incentives for online cooperative games. Then, we propose two novel allocation mechanisms: (i) a universal mechanism satisfying fundamental participation-incentive axioms; and (ii) a mechanism tailored to superadditive value functions, which ensures both individual rationality and early-arrival incentive. Contribution/Results: We provide rigorous theoretical proofs that both mechanisms fully satisfy all target axioms. The proposed framework significantly enhances long-term cooperation stability and delivers the first axiomatically grounded solution for fair and efficient payoff allocation in dynamic coalition environments.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Cooperative Game Theory
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Decision/Utility Theory

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications

Abstract

This paper studies cooperative games where coalitions are formed online and the value generated by the grand coalition must be irrevocably distributed among the players at each timestep. We investigate the fundamental issue of strategic pariticipation incentives and address these concerns by formalizing natural participation incentive axioms. Our analysis reveals that existing value-sharing mechanisms fail to meet these criteria. Consequently, we propose several new mechanisms that not only fulfill these desirable participation incentive axioms but also satisfy the early arrival incentive for general valuation functions. Additionally, we refine our mechanisms under superadditive valuations to ensure individual rationality while preserving the previously established axioms.

Problem

• online cooperative games participation
• value-sharing mechanisms failure
• new mechanisms satisfying axioms

Innovation

• Online coalition formation
• Participation incentive axioms
• Superadditive valuation mechanisms