Behavioral observability and reputational-preference–based rewarding mechanism promotes cooperation in spatial social dilemmas

To explore the incentive mechanisms of cooperation, inspired by preference for reputation in indirect reciprocity and the influence of behavioral observability on fitness, we present a new rewarding mechanism by incorporating these two impact factors into the evaluation of fitness in the spatial prisoner's dilemma game (PDG), under which a dynamically changing reward is established for cooperative neighbors whose reputation is higher than the average score of all neighbors. Simulation results reveal that the proposed rewarding mechanism favors the evolution of cooperation, under the joint effects of behavioral observability and reputational preference, cooperators can gradually agglomerate and form close clusters to defend the invasion of defectors. Moreover, we have investigated the characteristic snapshots and strategy transitions during the evolutionary process, which further validate the above outcome