Leadership by example promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods game

Profit-driven strategies are not always adopted in human society. Reputation, which is often treated as indirect reciprocity, is an important factor to promote cooperation. In this paper, we propose a new kind of reputation mechanism by introducing leadership by example from a complex network perspective. The degree of each node is influenced by reputation value. Leadership by example with higher reputation and greater scope of influence, which could not be ignored, are special group in social network, especially in China. Numerical simulation results are indicated that the evolutionary curves of cooperation are presented an inverted U-shape as the increase of the scope of influence of players. In addition, the relationship are discussed among initial fraction of leadership by example, synergy factors, maximal scope of influence. Whats more, the optimal initial fraction of leadership by example is studied in different conditions. Our work may be beneficial to address the cooperation dilemmas in public goods game (PGG). (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.