Reputation-based adaptive strategy persistence can promote cooperation considering the actual influence of individual behavior

Reputation mechanisms have proved to play a crucial role in promoting cooperation. In some previous studies, reputation updates only considered an individual's past behavior or the environment in which the individual is located. In fact, an individual's reputation depends not only on past behaviors, but also on the actual impact of his/her behavior on society. Motivated by these facts, we introduce strategy persistence in the spatial Prisoner's Dilemma to explore the actual impact of individual behavior on society. Specifically, it is determined whether behavior has an actual impact on society by comparing the average payoffs of an individual and his/her community. Experiments show that our model significantly promotes cooperation. The proportion of population cooperation shows a nonlinear evolution, eventually converges to the oscillatory state. Interestingly, we find that some low-reputation individuals and high-reputation cooperators always change strategies. Finally, we verify the accuracy of the results by applying the mean-field approach. •Strategy persistence is introduced into the Prisoner's Dilemma to explore individual behavior's actual impact on society.•In the strategy coexistence state, the cooperation ratio evolves non-linearly, then converges to the oscillatory state.•Oscillatory states are caused because of most low-reputation individuals and some high-reputation cooperators.•The accuracy of the results is verified using the mean-field method.