Crowdsensing Strategies Inspired by Choir Management Analyzed via Game Theory

Abstract

In this paper, we draw an analogy between crowd-sensing scenarios and the real life activity of singing in a choir. We identify some similarities, in particular for what concerns the role of the network coordinator and the choir director, as well as the common desirability of eliminating non-collaborative behavior (free-riding). Inspired by this comparison, we identify some strategies that the "director" can implement during "choir rehearsals" and we give a game theoretic analysis of their effectiveness. The general model is based on characterizing the willingness to undertake effort for the common task as a user's private type, which is compared to the contribution cost to decide whether to contribute or free-ride. Imposing some access penalty is known to reduce significantly the onset of free-riding, and we discuss possible ways to implement such a penalty, namely, we compare a probabilistic exclusion of free riders, as well as a multiplicative and an additive penalty to access, and we show the better effectiveness of the last strategy.