A Study of Mechanism Design for C2C Service Based on Multi-agent Simulation

Abstract

In Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) services where individuals provide their own idle assets to other individuals, the number of trouble incidents between individuals is increasing. These incidents arise because individuals act inappropriately (defection strategy) when providing or using assets against the will of the counterpart. One goal for C2C services is to activate the market by increasing the number of individuals who take appropriate action (cooperation strategy). Toward this end, we propose a mechanism that achieves the desired cooperation rate. The number of individuals who follow the cooperation strategy will increase as incentives are increased, and there is a trade-off between the achievable cooperation rate and incentives. The purpose of this study is to clarify the conditions that achieve the desired cooperation rate with fewer incentives. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism increases the number of individuals who follow the cooperation strategy and that incentives contribute to achieving the desired cooperation rate rather than penalties.