Analysis of Reward Function for Incentive-based Participation Promotion Method

Abstract

A lot of research has been done on delay tolerant networks (DTNs) that are effective in situations where networks are not continuously connected, and many of them are designed for disaster situations. However, we believe that DTNs are valuable not only in times of disaster, but also in non-disaster situations where continuous network connectivity is possible. In this paper, we investigate the incentive-based participation promotion method that provides an incentive to participants for each message forwarded during contact, and we study a reward function to calculate incentive of the method. Since this method seems to be effective in vitalizing areas where community events are held using this system, we consider a function that determines the reward for participants and investigated the effect of the reward function on probability of participation in the system using game theory and simulation. As a result, we proposed new reward function, and then it is considered that users actively participate in system because of high reward. The proposed method is more effect than previous research in order to accelerate users to participate in and also restrain game owner’s cost. It is revealed that the proposed reward function is suitable in terms of area activation and reward control for event organizers.