Abstract
In the binary networked public goods (BNPG for short) game, every player needs to decide if she participates in a public project whose utility is shared equally by the community. We study the problem of deciding if there exists a pure strategy Nash equilibrium (PSNE) in such games. The problem is already known to be \(\textsf{NP}\)-complete. This casts doubt on predictive power of PSNE in BNPG games. We provide fine-grained analysis of this problem under the lens of parameterized complexity theory. We consider various natural graph parameters and show \(\mathsf {W[1]}\)-hardness, XP, and \(\textsf{FPT}\) results. Hence, our work significantly improves our understanding of BNPG games where PSNE serves as a reliable solution concept. We finally prove that some graph classes, for example path, cycle, bi-clique, and complete graph, always have a PSNE if the utility function of the players are same.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bramoullé, Y., Kranton, R., et al.: Public goods in networks. J. Econ. Theory 135(1), 478–494 (2007)
Berman, P., Karpinski, M., Scott, A.: Approximation hardness of short symmetric instances of max-3sat. Technical report (2004)
Buchwald, E.: Why do so many Americans refuse to wear face masks? Politics is part of it—but only part. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-do-so-many-Americans-refuse-to-wear-face-masks-it-may-have-nothing-to-do-with-politics-2020-06-16 (2020)
Burt, R.S.: Social contagion and innovation: cohesion versus structural equivalence. Am. J. Sociol. 92(6), 1287–1335 (1987)
Cygan, M., Fomin, F.V., Kowalik, L., Lokshtanov, D., Daniel, M., Marcin, P., Michal, P., Saket, S.: Parameterized Algorithms. Springer (2015)
Conley, T.G., Udry, C.R.: Learning about a new technology: Pineapple in Ghana. Am. Econ. Rev. 100(1), 35–69 (2010)
Daskalakis, C., Goldberg, P.W., Papadimitriou, C.H.: The complexity of computing a Nash equilibrium. SIAM J. Comput. 39(1), 195–259 (2009)
Dall’Asta, L., Pin, P., Ramezanpour, A.: Optimal equilibria of the best shot game. J. Public Econ. Theory 13(6), 885–901 (2011)
Elkind, E., Goldberg, L.A., Goldberg, P.: Nash equilibria in graphical games on trees revisited. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 100–109 (2006)
Galeotti, A., Goyal, S., Jackson, M.O., Vega-Redondo, F., Yariv, L.: Network games. Rev. Econ. Stud. 77(1), 218–244 (2010)
Gottlob, G., Greco, G., Scarcello, F.: Pure Nash equilibria: hard and easy games. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 24, 357–406 (2005)
Immorlica, N., Kleinberg, J., Mahdian, M., Wexler, T.: The role of compatibility in the diffusion of technologies through social networks. In: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pp. 75–83 (2007)
Iwata, Y., Ogasawara, T., Ohsaka, N.: On the power of tree-depth for fully polynomial FPT algorithms (2017). arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.04376
Kearns, M.I.: Graphical games. Algorithmic Game Theory 3, 159–180 (2007)
Kleinberg, J.: Cascading behavior in networks: algorithmic and economic issues. Algorithmic Game Theory 24, 613–632 (2007)
Komarovsky, Z., Levit, V., Grinshpoun, T., Meisels, A.: Efficient equilibria in a public goods game. In: 2015 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT), vol. 2, pp. 214–219. IEEE (2015)
Kollock, P.: Social dilemmas: the anatomy of cooperation. Ann. Rev. Sociol. 24(1), 183–214 (1998)
Levit, V., Komarovsky, Z., Grinshpoun, T., Meisels, A.: Incentive-based search for efficient equilibria of the public goods game. Artif. Intell. 262, 142–162 (2018)
Manshadi, V.H., Johari, R.: Supermodular network games. In: 2009 47th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing (Allerton), pp. 1369–1376. IEEE (2009)
Morris, S.: Contagion. Rev. Econ. Stud. 67(1), 57–78 (2000)
Morgan, R.E., Truman, J.L.: Criminal victimization, technical report (2017)
Samer, M., Szeider, S.: Tractable cases of the extended global cardinality constraint. Constraints 16(1), 1–24 (2011)
Santos, F.C., Santos, M.D., Pacheco, J.M.: Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games. Nature 454(7201), 213–216 (2008)
Valente, T.W.: Network models of the diffusion of innovations. Number 303.484 V3 (1995)
Valente, T.W.: Network models and methods for studying the diffusion of innovations. Models Methods Soc. Netw. Anal. 28, 98 (2005)
Wong, T.: Coronavirus: why some countries wear face masks and others don’t. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52015486 (2020)
Yu, S., Kempe, D., Vorobeychik, Y.: Altruism design in networked public goods games (2021). arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.00505
Yu, S., Zhou, K., Brantingham, P.J., Vorobeychik, Y.: Computing equilibria in binary networked public goods games. In: AAAI, pp. 2310–2317 (2020)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Maiti, A., Dey, P. On Parameterized Complexity of Binary Networked Public Goods Game. Algorithmica 86, 307–333 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00453-023-01174-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00453-023-01174-4