Influence of environmental changes on cooperative behavior in the prisoner's dilemma game on an artificial social model

In this paper, by simulations on an artificial social model, we analyze cooperative behavior of agents playing the prisoner's dilemma game, in which each of the agents has the two strategies: cooperate and defect. Because defect yields a better payoff whichever strategy an opponent chooses, it is rational for an agent to choose defect in a single game or a finite number of games. However, it is known that a pair of cooperates can also be a Nash equilibrium pair if the players do not know when the game is over or the game is infinitely repeated. To investigate such cooperative behavior, we employ an artificial social model called the Sugarscape and carry out simulations on the model. Arranging three kinds of environments in the Sugarscape, we examine cooperative behavior of agents who are essentially selfish, in a sense that they maximize their payoffs, and investigate influence of environmental changes on the cooperative behavior.