Effects of Empty Sites on Cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Based on Social Diversity

We study the effects of empty sites in the prisoner’s dilemma game based on social diversity by introducing some empty sites into a square lattice. The results reveal that the empty sites dramatically enhance the cooperation level for a wide range of temptation to defection values if two types of players coexist. By calculating the chances of different type-combinations of the players located on the square lattice, we find that there is an intermediate region where five social ranks are induced to satisfy the certain rank distributions and the cooperation level is significantly enhanced. Moreover, simulation results also show that the moderate gaps among the social ranks can favor cooperation for a larger occupation density