Heterogeneous investments induced by emotions promote cooperation in public goods games

Emotion plays an important role in heterogeneous investments and has some direct effects on the cooperation behaviour of a player in a public goods game (PGG). How this irrational factor affects the heterogeneous investments and what level of cooperators in players with emotions are still unknown to us. Here, the heterogeneous investments induced by emotions into a PGG were introduced. The emotional index was firstly quantified by considering a memory-cumulative effect, and then an investment formula was proposed based on this emotional index. At last, the effect of emotions on the cooperation behaviour in a PGG was investigated. Results show that the heterogeneous investments induced by emotions can improve cooperation significantly in a PGG, and that an increase of the memory length, the emotional increment, or the memory discounting factor can improve the cooperation level.

Coopetition in social entrepreneurship: a strategy for social value devolution

PurposeCoopetition is a well-studied phenomenon in traditional enterprises. However, it lacks deepening in the social sphere, specifically on hybrid organizations (social and commercial goals). This paper analyzes the configuration of coopetition strategies in social enterprises and how these strategies can improve social value devolution.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a multicase study with Brazilian social enterprises and a social incubator. Semistructured interviews with founders of the social enterprises and the president of the incubator were the primary sources of evidence, supported by observations and secondary data.FindingsThe authors identified four main findings: (1) the social incubator induces coopetition among social enterprises; (2) coopetition is necessary to improve market performance; (3) coopetition is a natural strategy resulting from the activity of the social enterprise; (4) the behavior and context of social enterprises generate a new framework for coopetition formation. This framework comprises three stages of value: a social cooperation level to co-creation of value; second, a social competition level to the appropriation of value; and the third coopetition-balanced level to social value devolution.Originality/valueThe authors advance knowledge on coopetition in an exciting, underexplored context, social entrepreneurship. The authors highlight that the coopetition nature and outcome in social enterprises have specificities compared to traditional businesses. The authors also improve the understanding of social value devolution based on simultaneous cooperation and competition among small social enterprises, allowing theoretical and practical implications. Thus, they advance the recurring discussion in coopetition literature beyond the generation and appropriation of value.

Imitation and aspiration dynamics bring different evolutionary outcomes in feedback-evolving games

Feedback-evolving games characterize the interplay between the evolution of strategies and environments. Rich dynamics have been derived for such games under the premise of the replicator equation, which unveils persistent oscillations between cooperation and defection. Besides replicator dynamics, here we have employed aspiration dynamics, in which individuals, instead of comparing payoffs with opposite strategies, assess their payoffs by self-evaluation to update strategies. We start with a brief review of feedback-evolving games with replicator dynamics and then comprehensively discuss such games with aspiration dynamics. Interestingly, the tenacious cycles, as perceived in replicator dynamics, cannot be observed in aspiration dynamics. Our analysis reveals that a parameter θ —which depicts the strength of cooperation in enhancing the environment—plays a pivotal role in comprehending the dynamics. In particular, with the symmetric aspiration level, if replete and depleted states, respectively, experience Prisoner's Dilemma and Trivial games, the rich environment is achievable only when θ > 1. The case θ < 1 never allows us to reach the replete state, even with a higher cooperation level. Furthermore, if cooperators aspire less than defectors, then the enhanced state can be achieved with a relatively lower θ value compared with the opposite scenario because too much expectation from cooperation can be less beneficial.

The relationship between dental fear and cooperation of children during dental treatments with their parents’ general health

Objective: Dental fear is a common phenomenon in children and parents can have a key role in the development of child's dental anxiety. There is moderate evidence to support the relationship between the parental general health and children’s dental fear. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between dental fear and cooperation of children during dental treatment with the general health of parents.Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was done on 130 children aged 6 to 12 at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Guilan University of Medical Sciences from May to September 2020.The personality traits and general health of parents were assessed by using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). The Frankl's behavior rating scale and Children's Fear Survey Schedule Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS) were used to respectively assess the degree of cooperation during dental practices and children’s dental fear. Statistical approaches included T-test, Chi-square and Pearson Linear correlation. A significant level of differences was taken as P<0.05.Results: 69.3 % of children behaved positively and definitely positively during dental treatment. 56 boys and 74 girls with mean age of 9.13 ±2.02 years participated in this study. There was a significant correlation between the children's age with dental fear and cooperation level (P<0.001). There was no significant difference in dental fear score (P=0.63) and cooperation level (P=0.99) between boys and girls. There was not statistically significant relationship between the general health of the parents and the level of children's cooperation and dental fear during dental treatment (P>0.001).Conclusion: There was not relationship between parent's general health with children's dental fear and cooperation.

Research on the impact of payoff reflection mechanism on cooperation evolution

Taking into account the results of historical behavior in real life on the choice of strategy, we proposes a payoff reflection mechanism. In the process of cooperation evolution, the game individuals will judge whether to learn each other's strategies based on the historical payoff of himself and his neighbors, that is, the strategy learning is affected by the historical payoff. If the current strategy can bring greater payoff in historical behavior, the game players will change the current strategy with less possibility. For this reason, the historical payoff reference coefficients w and u of the game individuals and their neighbors are proposed to measure the degree of reference of game individuals to their own and neighbors' historical payoff. The memory interval length is expressed by M. The experimental results show that the payoff reflection mechanism can greatly improve the cooperation level of the group. However, the reference rate of historical payoff is not the bigger the better. The strength of memory ability and the level of betrayal temptation will affect the optimal value of w and u.

The evolution of extortion strategy in the kagome lattice

The extortion strategy can let its surplus exceed its opponents by a fixed percentage, hence the influence of extortion strategy in a population games has drawn wide attention. In this paper, we study the evolution of extortion strategy with unconditional cooperation and unconditional defection strategies in the Kagome lattice with abundant triangles. Our investigation shows that the extortion strategy can act as catalysts to promote the evolution of cooperation in the networked Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Moreover, proper strength of extortion slope can improve the living environment of the cooperators, thus they enhance cooperation level in the network. Moreover, proper strength of extortion can not only enhance the cooperation level, but also delay the extinction of cooperation. The underlying overlapping triangles help individuals form cooperation cliques that play crucial roles for the evolution of cooperation in those lattices.

False beliefs can bootstrap cooperative communities through social norms

Building cooperative communities has always been a crucial problem for human societies. Much research suggests that cooperation is facilitated by knowing who exactly is a cooperator and defector, and being able to respond accordingly. As such, anonymous games is thought to hinder cooperation. Here, we show that this conclusion is altered dramatically in the presence of conditional cooperation norms and heterogeneous beliefs about others' behaviours. Specifically, we show that inaccurate beliefs about other players' behaviours can in fact help foster and stabilize cooperation via social norms. To show this, we combine the population dynamics of a social community with the game theory of interactions within the community. In our model, individuals can join a community based on beliefs generated by public signals regarding the level of cooperation within, and decide to cooperate or not depending on these beliefs. These signals may overstate how much cooperation there really is. We show that even if individuals eventually learn the true level of cooperation, the initially false beliefs can trigger a dynamic that sustains high level of cooperation within the community. We also characterize how the rates of joining, leaving, and learning in the community affect the cooperation level and community size simultaneously. Our results illustrate how false beliefs in the presence of conditional cooperation norms can help build up cooperative communities.

Competition Between Public Resources Promotes Cooperation

As cooperation incurs a cost to the cooperator for others to benefit, its evolution seems to contradict natural selection. How evolution has resolved this obstacle, has been among the most intensely studied questions in the evolutionary theory in recent decades. Here, by showing that competition between public resources provides a simple mechanism for cooperation to flourish, we uncover a novel road to the evolution of cooperation. Such a mechanism can be at work in many biological or social contexts where individuals can form different groups or join different institutions to perform a collective action task, or when they can choose between different collective actions, with different profitability. As a simple evolutionary model suggests, in such a context, defectors tend to join the highest quality resource. This allows cooperators to survive and out-compete defectors by sheltering in a lower quality resource. Cooperation level is maximized however, when the qualities of the two highest quality resources are similar, and thus, they can perform the most competitively to attract individuals.

POTENTIAL CLUSTERS IN BANAT AND THEIR ROLE IN REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The interest in the study of clusters and their role in the economic development of certain regions has constantly grown in the past years. This interest has also been emphasized by the emergence of successful clusters in many regions; these are clusters that have visibly and they have determined the increase in competitiveness of those particular regions. Clusters are geographic gatherings of firms and institutions, connected to each other and specialized in certain fields of activity. In Romania, due to the low cooperation level among enterprises we cannot say that proper clusters exists, but just some “spatial gatherings” of firms activating in certain domains, connected by the need of using certain natural resources and the existence of a specialized workforce in that particular domain. Natural “clusters” can be identified by means of quantitative analyses, these indicating the possibility to identify certain spatial assemblies of firms in a certain economic sector. Starting from these quantitative analyses, for Banat region have been identified some important spatial gatherings of firms activating in certain domains which could represent potential clusters in this area. As clusters function on the principle of cooperation among enterprises, a strong point of the region is the presence of foreign investors which promoted the model of enterprise cooperation through sub-contracting local enterprises. Among these, we mention the Italian investors which brought to Banat, especially to Timi? County the Italian cluster model. Are there in Banat premises for the emergence of clusters? Which are the fields of activity in which these clusters can emerge? What role will these clusters play in the economic development of the region? These are just some of the questions that we aim answering to through this study.

Cluster cooperation mechanisms evaluation for waste processing of the Forest Complex of Siberia

The study subject is the approaches development for assessing cooperation in a cluster. Study purpose: a selection of tools to assess the characteristics of cooperative ties in a cluster for processing waste from a forest complex in Yenisei Siberia. Methods: Case analysis, questionnaire, survey, expert assessment, and a method of pair comparisons. Results: The following results have been substantiated: The emerging cluster for waste processing from the Yenisei Siberian forest complex; the situational factors; industry specialization; the goals of creating a cluster, and the interests of participants. As the cluster evolves, the directions and cooperation level of cluster members are the subject to change. The obstacles ranking for cooperation in the cluster is carried out as well. An aggregated indicator of the intensity of cooperative ties, based on five criteria, is proposed, which makes it possible to evaluate both industrial and innovative cooperation. In addition, it is proposed to determine the weighting factors situationally, depending on the target orientation of the cluster. Summary: it is shown that the desired value of aggregated cooperation indicator should be formed in the coordinate system, i.e. “innovation – sustainability”. Evaluation and regulation of the indicator level can serve as a tool for making and implementing strategic decisions on cluster development priorities.