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Simulating the impact of social resource shortages on involution competition: involution, sit-up, and lying-flat strategies

Author

Listed:
  • Renxian Zuo

    (Wuhan University
    Wuhan University)

  • Chaocheng He

    (Wuhan University
    Wuhan University
    Wuhan Unversity)

  • Jiang Wu

    (Wuhan University
    Wuhan University)

  • Hao Jin

    (Wuhan University)

  • Jiarui Miao

    (Wuhan University)

  • Hang Xiong

    (Wuhan University
    Huazhong Agricultural University)

Abstract

Along with COVID-19 ravaging almost 3 years, restricted working time and limited online working efficiency for the whole population results in social produced resource shortage sharpening. But how would the resource shortage affect the evolution of social population’s competition strategies? The concepts of involution, sit-up and lying-flat are put forward to describe such abnormal social competition phenomena and simulate individuals’ behaviour strategies, and a replicator dynamics game method with three strategies is proposed to solve the question. It is found that resource decrease and population increase result in involution degree relieving, while working time decreasing promotes involution. The increasing of sit-up cost and the utility of involution leads to severe involution, while the increase in involution cost will relieve involution. Moreover, it’s interesting to find that bad strategy drives out good when the resource becomes scarce. The robustness of results is tested by Derivative-free spectral approach, dual annealing and traversal method. The research sorts the evolution of involution concept and remaining qualitative & quantitative researches, and complements it from sit-up and lying-flat concept. The evolution of the three competition strategies is deduced from mathematics and proved by the simulation results. The research pays attention to the social involution concerns, in which the method and the results are meaningful to help give some insights for the deteriorative social competition. The R code and results can be reached at https://github.com/ZuoRX/replicator-dynamics/tree/main/codeA1 .

Suggested Citation

  • Renxian Zuo & Chaocheng He & Jiang Wu & Hao Jin & Jiarui Miao & Hang Xiong, 2025. "Simulating the impact of social resource shortages on involution competition: involution, sit-up, and lying-flat strategies," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 27-62, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:comaot:v:31:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10588-025-09398-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s10588-025-09398-1
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