Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem

Abstract Situations where independent agents need to align their activities to achieve individually and socially beneficial outcomes are abundant, reaching from everyday situations like fixing a time for a meeting to global problems like climate change agreements. Often such situations can be descri...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales:	Arno Riedl, Ingrid M. T. Rohde, Martin Strobel
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/6d95953cd3a64e2d90af371e1a42106c
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:6d95953cd3a64e2d90af371e1a42106c
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:6d95953cd3a64e2d90af371e1a42106c2021-12-02T18:15:45ZFree neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem10.1038/s41598-021-87019-y2045-2322https://doaj.org/article/6d95953cd3a64e2d90af371e1a42106c2021-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87019-yhttps://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Situations where independent agents need to align their activities to achieve individually and socially beneficial outcomes are abundant, reaching from everyday situations like fixing a time for a meeting to global problems like climate change agreements. Often such situations can be described as stag-hunt games, where coordinating on the socially efficient outcome is individually optimal but also entails a risk of losing out. Previous work has shown that in fixed interaction neighborhoods agents’ behavior mostly converges to the collectively inefficient outcome. However, in the field, interaction neighborhoods often can be self-determined. Theoretical work investigating such circumstances is ambiguous in whether the efficient or inefficient outcome will prevail. We performed an experiment with human subjects exploring how free neighborhood choice affects coordination. In a fixed interaction treatment, a vast majority of subjects quickly coordinates on the inefficient outcome. In a treatment with neighborhood choice, the outcome is dramatically different: behavior quickly converges to the socially desirable outcome leading to welfare gains 2.5 times higher than in the environment without neighborhood choice. Participants playing efficiently exclude those playing inefficiently who in response change their behavior and are subsequently included again. Importantly, this mechanism is effective despite that only few exclusions actually occur.Arno RiedlIngrid M. T. RohdeMartin StrobelNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Arno Riedl Ingrid M. T. Rohde Martin Strobel Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
description	Abstract Situations where independent agents need to align their activities to achieve individually and socially beneficial outcomes are abundant, reaching from everyday situations like fixing a time for a meeting to global problems like climate change agreements. Often such situations can be described as stag-hunt games, where coordinating on the socially efficient outcome is individually optimal but also entails a risk of losing out. Previous work has shown that in fixed interaction neighborhoods agents’ behavior mostly converges to the collectively inefficient outcome. However, in the field, interaction neighborhoods often can be self-determined. Theoretical work investigating such circumstances is ambiguous in whether the efficient or inefficient outcome will prevail. We performed an experiment with human subjects exploring how free neighborhood choice affects coordination. In a fixed interaction treatment, a vast majority of subjects quickly coordinates on the inefficient outcome. In a treatment with neighborhood choice, the outcome is dramatically different: behavior quickly converges to the socially desirable outcome leading to welfare gains 2.5 times higher than in the environment without neighborhood choice. Participants playing efficiently exclude those playing inefficiently who in response change their behavior and are subsequently included again. Importantly, this mechanism is effective despite that only few exclusions actually occur.
format	article
author	Arno Riedl Ingrid M. T. Rohde Martin Strobel
author_facet	Arno Riedl Ingrid M. T. Rohde Martin Strobel
author_sort	Arno Riedl
title	Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
title_short	Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
title_full	Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
title_fullStr	Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
title_full_unstemmed	Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
title_sort	free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/6d95953cd3a64e2d90af371e1a42106c
work_keys_str_mv	AT arnoriedl freeneighborhoodchoiceboostssociallyoptimaloutcomesinstaghuntcoordinationproblem AT ingridmtrohde freeneighborhoodchoiceboostssociallyoptimaloutcomesinstaghuntcoordinationproblem AT martinstrobel freeneighborhoodchoiceboostssociallyoptimaloutcomesinstaghuntcoordinationproblem
_version_	1718378337622032384

Free neighborhood choice boosts socially optimal outcomes in stag-hunt coordination problem

Ejemplares similares