Coevolving allocation of resources and cooperation in spatial evolutionary games

In this article, the co-evolution of resources and cooperation in spatial evolutionary games is studied. Existence of competition in nature and human society derives from the confrontation between the limit of resources and the infinity of demands. As a result, resource allocation is inseparable from various games, where resource acquisition depends on the outcome of games and the number of possessing resources would in turn affect the choice of game strategy. Here, by means of a concise and strategy-independent rule, limited resources are firstly involved into the evolution of prisoner's dilemma game (PDG) and three main results are obtained: (a) the coevolving resources in PDG can effectively promote the level of cooperation, and players with cooperative behavior are easier to possess resources; (b) in equilibrium, resources in the system approximately follow the power law distribution. A fraction of players would hold the most of resources but a considerable number of players lose almost all their property; (c) when the lowest guarantee of resources as a protective mechanism is assigned to each player, the level of cooperation can be further promoted. Moreover, an optimal value of the lowest guarantee can be found to inspire cooperative behaviors. The related microscopic system properties are studied and other social dilemmas as different kinds of representatives are also discussed.