Climate change induced migration and the evolution of cooperation

We study the impact of climate change induced migration on the evolution of cooperation using an N-player social dilemma game. Players in the population are divided into non-overlapped groups, and they can choose to either cooperate or defect within their group. At the same time, the players are mapped to the nodes of a scale-free network, enabling them to learn from the actions of players from other groups. Every player is allowed to migrate between groups, and their migration decisions are governed by the risk from climate change at the current group, as well as their ability to adapt. We introduce a cooperation threshold to ensure that a minimum percentage of players cooperate before any benefit can be achieved within a group. Comprehensive simulation experiments show that migration has a positive impact on the level of cooperation, and the cooperative behaviour observed is proportional to the threshold level. This study contributes by being one of the first to study climate change induced migration using evolutionary game theory. Our findings also contribute to the understanding of the impact of cooperation thresholds in promoting cooperative behaviour in multi-player social dilemma games, where players are allowed to migrate. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.