Abstract
We study the Kolkata Paise Restaurant Problem (KPRP) with multiple dining
clubs, extending work in [A. Harlalka, A. Belmonte and C. Griffin,
\textit{Physica A}, 620:128767, 2023]. In classical KPRP, $N$ agents chose
among $N$ restaurants at random. If multiple users choose the same restaurant,
only one will eat. In a dining club, agents coordinate to avoid choosing the
same restaurant, but may collide with users outside the club. We consider a
dynamic in which agents switch among clubs or the unaffiliated (free agent)
group based on their comparative probability of eating. Agents' affiliations
are sticky in the sense that they are insensitive (tolerate) to differences in
eating probability below a threshold $\tau$ without switching groups. We study
the tendency of one group (dining club or free agent group) to become dominant
as a function of tolerance by studying the mean-field dynamics of group
proportion. We then show empirically that the mean-field group dynamic
(assuming infinite populations) differs from the finite population group
dynamic. We derive a mathematical approximation in the latter case, showing
good agreement with the data. The paper concludes by studying the impact of
(food) taxation, redistribution and freeloading in the finite population case.
We show that a group that redistributes food tends to become dominant more
often as a function of increasing tolerance to a point, at which point agents
do not switch frequently enough to enable group dynamics to emerge. This is
negatively affected by freeloaders from the non-redistributing group.
Citation
ID:
282381
Ref Key:
griffin2025multigroup