Interactive Agent-Based Simulation for Experimentation: A Case Study with Cooperative Game Theory

Abstract

Incorporating human behavior is a current challenge for agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS). Human behavior includes many different aspects depending on the scenario considered. The scenario context of this paper is strategic coalition formation, which is traditionally modeled using cooperative game theory, but we use ABMS instead; as such, it needs to be validated. One approach to validation is to compare the recorded behavior of humans to what was observed in our simulation. We suggest that using an interactive simulation is a good approach to collecting the necessary human behavior data because the humans would be playing in precisely the same context as the computerized agents. However, such a validation approach may be suspectable to extraneous effects. In this paper, we conducted a correlation research experiment that included an investigation into whether game theory experience, an extraneous variable, affects human behavior in our interactive simulation; our results indicate that it did not make a significant difference. However, in only 42 percent of the trials did the human participants’ behavior result in an outcome predicted by the underlying theory used in our model, i.e., cooperative game theory. This paper also provides a detailed case study for creating an interactive simulation for experimentation.