Participation Incentives in Online Cooperative Games

Haris Aziz, Yuhang Guo, Zhaohong Sun

Abstract: This paper studies cooperative games where coalitions are formed online and the value generated by the grand coalition must be irrevocably distributed among the players at each time step. We investigate the fundamental issue of strategic participation incentives and address these concerns by formalizing natural participation incentive axioms. Our analysis reveals that existing value-sharing mechanisms fail to meet these criteria. Consequently, we propose a family of equal sharing rules that fulfill these desirable participation incentive axioms. Additionally, we refine our mechanisms under superadditive valuations to ensure individual rationality while preserving the previously established axioms.