Reputation mechanisms and cooperative emergence in complex network games: Current status and prospects

Abstract This paper comprehensively reviews the research progress on reputation evolution mechanisms within the framework of network-based evolutionary game theory. It first summarizes the typical strategy learning mechanisms used in evolutionary games. Next, it provides an overview of traditional reputation evolution mechanisms and their associated mathematical models, highlighting recent research findings. Furthermore, the paper presents experimental evidence from several key studies, including mechanisms like reputation-based incremental heterogeneity and reputation-based discount accumulation. It identifies the limitations of current research on reputation evolution mechanisms and proposes future research directions. The aim is to empirically verify the role of reputation in promoting cooperative behavior by exploring more accurate reputation evaluation mechanisms and developing reputation evolution models across diverse network structures.