Impact of emergence on the evolution of cooperation in public goods games

In this study, we investigated the evolutionary public goods games (PGG) on scale-free networks and studied the effect of network emergence. We used Hub emergence, which is an open-loop emergent process that restructures any dynamic network by creating hubs. Also we used Cluster emergence defined as an open-loop emergent process that increases the cluster coefficient of a dynamic network. With the aid of the analysis of the PGG on a graph, we are able to investigate intuitively how the emergence affects the transformation of individuals’ strategies. We find that the Hub emergence inhibits the emergence and sustainment of the cooperation, due to the fact that the vertices gather in big groups, and as a result diffuses cooperation among vertices and impact remote leaf-vertices to cooperate. However, Cluster emergence has also an impact on the evolution of cooperation, but with a lower intensity than the Hub emergence. As a result, the cooperation in PGG is more related to gathering in big groups than the cluster size.