Exploring Social Interactions on the Adriatic Network

This paper explores social interactions on the Adriatic network consisting of six countries surrounding the Adriatic Sea. Using game theory, we analyze how three well-known classes of 2x2 strategic games, namely Prisoner’s dilemma, anti-coordination and coordination games, would be played on the Adriatic network. We determine all Nash equilibria, i.e., steady states, and obtain two main results. First, anti-coordination games on the Adriatic network always induce multiple (4, 5, 7 or 12) Nash equilibria that vary with payoffs and may differ in efficiency. Second, coordination games on the Adriatic network have only trivial equilibria, unless a specific condition on payoffs is met, in which case two new equilibria emerge. Our findings may be of great interest for policy makers and other scholars interested in maritime pollution control and other water-related problems, as well as biodiversity conservation, as they indicate at which maritime borders (anti)coordination issues and resulting inefficiencies may arise. Knowing that, one may give special attention to the critical maritime borders and take extra care there, thus helping to prevent potential catastrophic events. Finally, our study can also be used for academic purposes, e.g., in classroom, to demonstrate how to perform a complete Nash equilibrium analysis on some real-world network which has a relatively simple structure.