Modeling collaborative data service provision around an open source platform under uncertainty with stochastic provision games

Abstract

This paper uses concepts taken from Cooperative Game Theory to model the incentives to join forces among a group of agents involved in collaborative provision of a mobile app under uncertainty around an open source platform. Demand uncertainty leads the agents to reach a noncooperative equilibrium by offering low quality apps. This can be avoided by introducing a coordination scheme through a common platform that eliminates the effects of lack of information. Coordination is achieved by providing a revenue sharing scheme enforcing the stability of the collaboration but also defined in a “fair” way, depending on the importance of the resources that each provider supplies to the app. To this aim, we introduce the concept of Stochastic Provision Games. This coordination leads both to higher app quality and improved profitability for the participants.