Negative Feedback Punishment Approach Helps Sanctioning Institutions Achieve Stable, Time-Saving and Low-Cost Performances

Abstract

Sanctioning institutions widely exist in human society. Although these institutions play an important role in the management of social affairs, sanctions are often seen to be costly in terms of both time and money. To enable sanctioning institutions to develop effective sanctions, we propose a negative feedback punishment approach for these institutions that combines the feedback control principle and the negative correlation principle. In the negative feedback punishment approach, the punishment intensity imposed on the group is negatively correlated with the current group cooperation proportion. Through evolutionary simulation and theoretical analysis, we found that the negative feedback punishment approach facilitates more stable, time-saving and low-cost performance by sanctioning institutions than other punishment methods. This work offers a feasible solution for sanctioning institutions to solve social dilemmas and provides a possible theoretical starting point for investigating effective pool punishment measures.