PhD Defence Yang Li | Effects and mitigation of violations in resource sharing markets

Effects and mitigation of violations in resource sharing markets

Yang Li is a PhD student in the Department of Mathematics of Operations Research. (Co)Promotors are prof.dr. M.J. Uetz, prof.dr. H. Sun and dr. A. Skopalik from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science.

This thesis studies resource-sharing systems, with a particular emphasis on business-to-peer (B2P) sharing markets. Using game-theoretic models, it examines how spatial structure, market incentives, competition, and mechanism design can shape consumer behavior and system performance. A particular focus is on an additional strategic choice of consumers, namely to “violate” rules, for example by illegally occupying a shared bicycle or cutting the queue. First, a bi-random geometric graph is introduced to study cooperation in spatial public goods games. Relatively small groups and limited group participation facilitate cooperative clusters and suppress violations. Second, a two-stage Stackelberg game is developed for a monopolistic B2P sharing market. A profit-maximizing supplier first determines price and supply, and consumers then interact in a nonatomic game under heterogeneous expected punishment costs. Lower prices and greater supply can reduce violations, but the supplier's profit-maximizing decisions do not necessarily minimize them. Subsidies for compliant users can further reduce violations and improve supplier profit and social welfare. Third, the model is extended to a duopoly. When consumers are sufficiently patient, competition reduces violations and improves consumer surplus and social welfare, although total supplier profit decreases; when they are highly impatient, the duopoly equilibrium may reproduce the corresponding monopoly outcome. Finally, a selfish routing game with linear latency functions is augmented with a voluntary paid priority option on each edge. Under marginal-externality pricing, every equilibrium attains the socially optimal total cost, yielding a price of anarchy equal to one by purely voluntary participation. Overall, the thesis shows how structural and institutional mechanisms can redirect self-interested behavior toward more compliant and socially preferable outcomes.