Inducing Equilibria in Networked Public Goods Games through Network Structure Modification

Abstract: Networked public goods games model scenarios in which self-interested agents decide whether or how much to invest in an action that benefits not only themselves, but also their network neighbors. Examples include vaccination, security investment, and crime reporting. While every agent's utility is increasing in their neighbors' joint investment, the specific form can vary widely depending on the scenario. A principal, such as a policymaker, may wish to induce large investment from the agents. Besides direct incentives, an important lever here is the network structure itself: by adding and removing edges, for example, through community meetings, the principal can change the nature of the utility functions, resulting in different, and perhaps socially preferable, equilibrium outcomes. We initiate an algorithmic study of targeted network modifications with the goal of inducing equilibria of a particular form. We study this question for a variety of equilibrium forms (induce all agents to invest, at least a given set $S$, exactly a given set $S$, at least $k$ agents), and for a variety of utility functions. While we show that the problem is NP-complete for a number of these scenarios, we exhibit a broad array of scenarios in which the problem can be solved in polynomial time by non-trivial reductions to (minimum-cost) matching problems.