The Impact of Altruism on the Efficiency of Atomic Congestion Games

We study the effect of combining selfishness and altruism in atomic congestion games. We allow players to be partially altruistic and partially selfish and determine the impact of this behavior on the overall system performance. Surprisingly, our results indicate that, in general, by allowing players to be (even partially) altruistic, the overall system performance deteriorates. Instead, for the class of symmetric load balancing games, a balance between selfish and altruistic behavior improves system performance to optimality.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TGC
• Authors: Ioannis Caragiannis, Christos Kaklamanis, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Maria Kyropoulou, Evi Papaioannou
• Keywords: Altruistic, Applied Computing, Atomic Congestion Games, Performance, TGC 2010