Gloria Alarcón-García, José Manuel Mayor Balsas, Edgardo Arturo Ayala Gaytán
Most research exploring the effect of trust on tax compliance focuses on institutional trust or diluted trust. In contrast, the role of dense social trust has been scarcely investigated, even less through rigorous empirical contrasts that determine the potential causal relationship between this type of trust and tax compliance. This paper contributes to this line of research, providing empirical evidence in this regard. Based on a sample of 2059 young university students, and using a structural equation model, we conclude that the behaviors and attitudes towards tax fraud and the economy that occur in the family potentially influence young people’s fiscal awareness.
Kavindu Warnakulasuriya, Prabhash Dissanayake, Navindu De Silva
et al.
The evolution of cooperation has been extensively studied using abstract mathematical models and simulations. Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) and the rise of LLM agents have demonstrated their ability to perform social reasoning, thus providing an opportunity to test the emergence of norms in more realistic agent-based simulations with human-like reasoning using natural language. In this research, we investigate whether the cooperation dynamics presented in Boyd and Richerson's model persist in a more realistic simulation of the Diner's Dilemma using LLM agents compared to the abstract mathematical nature in the work of Boyd and Richerson. Our findings indicate that agents follow the strategies defined in the Boyd and Richerson model, and explicit punishment mechanisms drive norm emergence, reinforcing cooperative behaviour even when the agent strategy configuration varies. Our results suggest that LLM-based Multi-Agent System simulations, in fact, can replicate the evolution of cooperation predicted by the traditional mathematical models. Moreover, our simulations extend beyond the mathematical models by integrating natural language-driven reasoning and a pairwise imitation method for strategy adoption, making them a more realistic testbed for cooperative behaviour in MASs.
This paper considers a hybrid pollution-control differential game with two farsighted players and one myopic player. Both the seasonal regime shifts in the state dynamics and the players' heterogeneous preferences are introduced into the model. The strategies under cooperative, noncooperative and partially cooperative scenarios are obtained by utilizing the Pontryagin's Maximum Principle. Under all feasible coalition structures, the convergence of the state variable is proved. A new sustainably--cooperative optimality principle is proposed according to the coalition structures, which belongs to the imputation set. The prerequisite for the existence of time-consistency in the sustainably-cooperative optimality principle is explicitly obtained. The seasonal imputation distribution procedure (IDP) is designed to maintain the time-consistentcy (dynamic stability) of cooperation over time.
Inside This Issue
This issue explores humanity’s journey at a moment when our systems, assumptions, and modes of thought are being tested by unprecedented complexity. It opens by examining the foundations of development itself—probing how societies evolve, how human consciousness transforms matter into resource, and how creativity, confidence, and organization act as the real engines of progress. Development is revealed not merely as economic change, but as a deep psychological and social process shaped by attitude, aspiration, and the power of ideas to reorganize life.
From this conceptual grounding, the focus widens to the global stage, where environmental destabilization intersects with rapid societal shifts. The accelerating pressures on Earth’s life-supporting systems, combined with geopolitical volatility and technological disruption, demand far-reaching structural renewal. Institutions, long shaped for a different era, must adapt to provide clarity, cohesion, and resilience. The need for conscious transformation—of systems, values, and governance—emerges as a defining imperative.
Attention then turns to global turbulence and the search for frameworks capable of guiding societies through overlapping crises. The call is for integrating knowledge systems, harmonizing scientific insight with ethical purpose, and expanding our understanding of security beyond traditional boundaries. Human wellbeing, planetary stability, and social trust are highlighted as essential dimensions of a more inclusive and integrated conception of global security.
The issue then explores the transformation of leadership. Traditional leader-centric models are shown to be inadequate in a world where influence flows through networks, relationships, and collective intelligence. Leadership becomes an emergent property of collaboration, shared purpose, and conscious participation—an activity distributed across people rather than concentrated in individuals.
Economic and financial innovation enters next as a key lever for shaping a more secure future. New strategies for managing resources, financing transitions, expanding monetary tools, and strengthening public systems are foregrounded. Underlying these proposals is the recognition that trust, reciprocity, and fairness form the bedrock of any functioning social contract. How societies raise, allocate, and legitimize financial resources becomes inseparable from how they cultivate cohesion and shared responsibility.
Shifting outward, the geopolitical lens examines the ongoing reorganization of global influence. Historical patterns reappear in new forms as power re-concentrates around civilizational centers. The durability of any hegemonic role is questioned as multipolarity accelerates and long-standing assumptions are challenged. Within this shifting landscape, the need for cooperative institutions, shared norms, and value-based global stewardship becomes more urgent.
From external systems, the issue moves inward toward culture, consciousness, and creativity. The integration of art and science is presented as essential for generating insight that is both analytically rigorous and emotionally resonant. Imagination emerges as a transformative force capable of revealing new possibilities and mobilizing shared meaning. Themes of spirituality, ethics, and personal purpose highlight the inner resources required to navigate uncertainty.
Historical perspectives on past climatic disruptions serve as reminders that humanity has long lived through cycles of change—and that interpretation, memory, and learning are crucial. Reflections on our current trajectory underscore the risks of forgetting foundational human values and the dangers of allowing technological power to outpace moral responsibility. The fragility of our species becomes a mirror for reevaluating how we live and what we prioritize.
The issue concludes by situating climate change as both a warning and a catalyst—an existential challenge that compels societies to elevate cooperation, rethink institutions, and embrace a new stage of global social evolution. Across all themes, a common thread emerges: the future depends on our capacity to integrate knowledge, cultivate wisdom, and act with shared purpose.
We hope you enjoy this issue.
International relations, Economic growth, development, planning
Shamusi Nakajubi, Michael Adelani Adewusi, Margaret Kareyo
Abstract This paper explores the current state of intra-data sharing practices in Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOS) in Uganda. The primary objective is to identify the challenges in current data sharing practices and explore how blockchain technology can transform these processes. A mixed-methods approach was employed, including surveys and qualitative interviews with SACCOS members and management. The results reveal significant challenges, including reliance on manual processes, security vulnerabilities, and lack of transparency, leading to inefficiencies and mistrust among members. Approximately 60% of respondents highlighted security as a major concern, while 50% cited insufficient transparency in data sharing. The findings indicate a pressing need for improved technological integration. The study concludes that implementing a blockchain-based framework can streamline operations, enhance data security, and foster trust within SACCOS, thereby significantly improving intra-data sharing practices and operational efficiency.
The public goods game describes a social dilemma in which a large proportion of agents act as conditional cooperators (CC): they only act cooperatively if they see others acting cooperatively because they satisfice with the social norm to be in line with what others are doing instead of optimizing cooperation. CCs are guided by aspiration-based reinforcement learning guided by past experiences of interactions with others and satisficing aspirations. In many real-world settings, reinforcing social norms do not emerge. In this paper, we propose that an optimizing reinforcement agent can facilitate cooperation through nudges, i.e. indirect mechanisms for cooperation to happen. The agent's goal is to motivate CCs into cooperation through its own actions to create social norms that signal that others are cooperating. We introduce a multi-agent reinforcement learning model for public goods games, with 3 CC learning agents using aspirational reinforcement learning and 1 nudging agent using deep reinforcement learning to learn nudges that optimize cooperation. For our nudging agent, we model two distinct reward functions, one maximizing the total game return (sum DRL) and one maximizing the number of cooperative contributions contributions higher than a proportional threshold (prop DRL). Our results show that our aspiration-based RL model for CC agents is consistent with empirically observed CC behavior. Games combining 3 CC RL agents and one nudging RL agent outperform the baseline consisting of 4 CC RL agents only. The sum DRL nudging agent increases the total sum of contributions by 8.22% and the total proportion of cooperative contributions by 12.42%, while the prop nudging DRL increases the total sum of contributions by 8.85% and the total proportion of cooperative contributions by 14.87%. Our findings advance the literature on public goods games and reinforcement learning.
With the emerging Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) technique, exploiting the mobile communication system with multi-domain resources, multiple network elements, and large-scale infrastructures to realize cooperative sensing is a crucial approach satisfying the requirements of high-accuracy and large-scale sensing in IoE. In this article, the deep cooperation in ISAC system including three perspectives is investigated. In the microscopic perspective, namely, within a single node, the sensing information carried by time-frequency-space-code domain resources is processed, such as phase compensation, coherent accumulation and other operations, thereby improving the sensing accuracy. In the mesoscopic perspective, the sensing accuracy could be improved through the cooperation of multiple nodes. We explore various multi-node cooperative sensing scenarios and present the corresponding challenges and future research trends. In the macroscopic perspective, the massive number of infrastructures from the same operator or different operators could perform cooperative sensing to extend the sensing coverage and improve the sensing continuity. We investigate network architecture, target tracking methods, and the large-scale sensing assisted digital twin construction. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of multi-nodes and multi-resources cooperative sensing over single resource or node sensing. This article may provide a deep and comprehensive view on the cooperative sensing in ISAC system to enhance the performance of sensing, supporting the applications of IoE.
In this work, we propose a distributed hierarchical locomotion control strategy for whole-body cooperation and demonstrate the potential for migration into large numbers of agents. Our method utilizes a hierarchical structure to break down complex tasks into smaller, manageable sub-tasks. By incorporating spatiotemporal continuity features, we establish the sequential logic necessary for causal inference and cooperative behaviour in sequential tasks, thereby facilitating efficient and coordinated control strategies. Through training within this framework, we demonstrate enhanced adaptability and cooperation, leading to superior performance in task completion compared to the original methods. Moreover, we construct a set of environments as the benchmark for embodied cooperation.
Abstract Exploring the evolutionary mechanisms of cooperation in societies where reputational consensus cannot be assumed, as in divided societies, is important for understanding the basic principles of human behavior in modern societies. Indirect reciprocity provides a major explanatory mechanism, but most studies have focused on how donors, i.e., one who decides whether to donate (cooperate or help) to a recipient or do nothing, are assessed. It is natural to think that there is no consensus among assessors in our society, and there is no reason to update only donor assessments when updating assessments. We constructed an agent-based model that enables updating of both donors’ and recipients’ images. Our exhaustive simulations showed that the well analyzed assessment rules updating donors’ images are only second best to an assessment rule updating bad images in most likely for maintaining cooperative regimes. Such a social norm that prioritizes a positive assessment is considered tolerant, which is also consistent with previous studies arguing that tolerant evaluation is important in private-assessment schemes.
Cooperative perception can significantly improve the perception performance of autonomous vehicles beyond the limited perception ability of individual vehicles by exchanging information with neighbor agents through V2X communication. However, most existing work assume ideal communication among agents, ignoring the significant and common \textit{interruption issues} caused by imperfect V2X communication, where cooperation agents can not receive cooperative messages successfully and thus fail to achieve cooperative perception, leading to safety risks. To fully reap the benefits of cooperative perception in practice, we propose V2X communication INterruption-aware COoperative Perception (V2X-INCOP), a cooperative perception system robust to communication interruption for V2X communication-aided autonomous driving, which leverages historical cooperation information to recover missing information due to the interruptions and alleviate the impact of the interruption issue. To achieve comprehensive recovery, we design a communication-adaptive multi-scale spatial-temporal prediction model to extract multi-scale spatial-temporal features based on V2X communication conditions and capture the most significant information for the prediction of the missing information. To further improve recovery performance, we adopt a knowledge distillation framework to give explicit and direct supervision to the prediction model and a curriculum learning strategy to stabilize the training of the model. Experiments on three public cooperative perception datasets demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in alleviating the impacts of communication interruption on cooperative perception.
Naser Ebrahimzadeh, Mohammad Sharif Sharifzadeh, Gholamhossein Abdollahzadeh
et al.
Context and purpose. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between social capital and conflict management and its impact on institutional effectiveness in rural cooperative companies.Methodology/approach. This research was conducted through the survey approach and a researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect field data. The statistical population of the research included members of 13 rural cooperative companies of Gorgan county (N=14988). The sample size was estimated using Cochran's formula (n=315) and the respondents were selected by random cluster sampling. All statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS21 and AMOS20.Findings and conclusions. The findings of this research explain that the conflict management variable has a fully mediating role in the relationship between social capital and institutional effectiveness. In other words, considering the significance of the causal relationship between social capital and conflict management and the causal relationship between conflict management and institutional effectiveness, it can be indicated that the variable of social capital indirectly affects institutional effectiveness through conflict management.Originality. Considering that no empirical research has been published in Iran considering the causal relationships between the three variables of social capital, institutional effectiveness and conflict management, the findings of this research can provide opening insight and knowledge for future research. Also, the measurement scales used in this research, which are customized to the contexts of the rural cooperatives, can be developed or used by other researchers. In addition, the suggestions derived from the findings of this research can be used in the design of training courses for the management of rural cooperative companies, as well as in policy making to reform the structure and institutional processes in this field.
Rising migration numbers and the resulting increase in economic and sociocultural heterogeneity in societies all over the world are theorised to put pressure on the sustainable use of common-pool resources [CPRs]. Increased heterogeneity is argued to decrease trust and diversify interests between resource users, leading to overuse and decline of natural and man-made CPRs. The aim of this paper is to understand cooperative behaviour under economic and sociocultural heterogeneity in CPRs, through the analyses of experimental data including 344 subjects from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and 144 subjects from India. Multilevel regression, ordinal logistic regression, linear conditional-contribution profiles [LCPs] and agent-based models [ABMs] are used to analyse and replicate experimental outcomes on the micro- and macro-level. Results show that the combination of economic and sociocultural heterogeneity affects cooperation negatively when the decision-situation is perceived as unfair, but that neither economic nor sociocultural heterogeneity on themselves affect cooperation negatively. Economic heterogeneity is even found to affect cooperation positively relative to homogeneity. Player type classification based on LCP scores shows that experimental outcomes can be interpreted with player types, and ABM simulations validate the experimental results by replicating the main outcomes.
AbstractContext and purpose: In recent years, cooperatives have attracted the attention of researchers as strategic elements to achieve sustainable economic development and greater social cohesion in the context of globalization. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the factors affecting the internationalization of cooperative businesses.Methodology: The present research is applied in terms of purpose and uses a qualitative approach through structured grounded theory. The process of studying the phenomenon was discovered based on the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 19 directors of active cooperative-oriented businesses with a history of international presence.Findings and Conclusions: The research findings in the form of a paradigm model include: causal conditions (context-oriented, entrepreneur-oriented, network-oriented), contextual conditions (organizational and extra-organizational), and intervening conditions (human, corporate, and institutional barriers), strategies (competitive and customer-oriented) Consequences (reputation and survival). Increasing and improving each component with a plan specific to each of them makes it possible to help the internationalization of cooperatives.Originality/innovation: The results of this research, while strengthening the literature on the internationalization of cooperatives, bring practical achievements to help managers develop the internationalization of cooperatives. It can also guide public policy on export and pave the way for the country's cooperative sector to increase international competitiveness. The innovation of the current research is its comprehensiveness, examining all the influencing factors of internationalization on cooperatives and in terms of the study's target audience to extract all the influential elements in line with the design of the internationalization model of cooperative-oriented businesses.
Video services in vehicular networks play a significant role in our daily traveling. In this paper, we propose a cooperative communication scheme to facilitate video data transmission, utilizing the mobility of vehicles and the cooperation among infrastructure and vehicles. To improve the video quality of experience (QoE), i.e., reduce the interruption ratio, quality variation and improve the playback quality, we design a Back Compensation (BC) video transmission strategy with the knowledge of vehicle status information. In addition, we analyze the throughput with one-hop and target-cluster-based cooperation schemes and obtain their closed-form expressions, respectively, which is useful for video encoding design in the central server. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach can improve the video performance significantly and verify the accuracy of our analytical results.
: Cooperatives, which are characterized by pooling of jointly owned and controlled resources in an enterprise by individual actors, are popular and widespread in modern societies. However, since each actor has an incentive to withhold resources individually while benefiting from the common pool, opportunistic behavior may result. One possibility to overcome this dilemma situation are internalized, normative beliefs which foster cooperative behavior. By experimentally modeling dilemma situations, we examine whether normative values work as behavioral reference points for members of cooperatives and whether this enhances cooperation. Our results from two lab experiments demonstrate that a cooperative framework, which we use as an indicator for normative beliefs, produces significantly higher cooperation rates in social dilemma situations. Furthermore, we see that an institution framed as a cooperative is chosen by a substantial share of persons, even if this institution produces inefficient results. Consequently, we conclude that general norms contribute to the cooperative effect of cooperatives.
elahe ajodani, Gholamreza Yavari, Abolfazl Mahmoodi
et al.
Given the obstacles in cooperatives, one of the ways to increase the share of the cooperative sector in the Iranian economy is to implement supportive policies by the public sector. The statistical population includes all active cooperatives producing agricultural sector, including 23 cooperatives in Shahroud city, which using random sampling method and Cochran's sampling formula out of 170 main members of companies 115 of them to study selection The research method was descriptive-correlational, which was performed in terms of data collection by survey, using the pre-test "researcher-made" questionnaire. At least three people from each company and a maximum of seven people participated in the study.The reliability and validity of the research instruments were confirmed by calculating the coefficients of KMO and Cronbach's alpha (α> 0.7) and by the panel of experts. Data analysis was performed with spss22 software. The results of the study showed that the members of the studied cooperatives are not well aware of the obstacles and problems of the agricultural sector and only see the supportive policy in injecting liquidity. Also, the most important obstacles to land consolidation in the agricultural sector from the point of view of the people studied are "lack of culture building in the field of ship together" and "lack of appropriate and sufficient training and extension courses in the field of ship together".Also, based on factor analysis, the barriers to agricultural production cooperatives were emphasized by emphasizing supportive policies in the managerial, personality and psychological factors, policy and supportive categories.
Paulo Victor Santos Souza, Rafael Silva, Chris T. Bauch
et al.
The emergence and prevalence of cooperative behavior within a group of selfish individuals remains a puzzle for \text{evolutionary game theory} precisely because it conflicts directly with the central idea of natural selection. Accordingly, in recent years, the search for an understanding of how cooperation can be stimulated, even when it conflicts with individual interest, has intensified. We investigate the emergence of cooperation in an age-structured evolutionary spatial game. In it, players age with time and the payoff that they receive after each round \text{depends on} their age. \text{We find that t}he outcome of the game is strongly influenced by the type of distribution used to modify the payoffs according to the age of each player. The results show that, under certain circumstances, cooperators may not only survive but dominate the population.
Water is an urgent input in agriculture and its optimum consumption needs management and water users associations can be a tool for this intention. The purpose of the study was to identify the factors affecting the adoption of water users association with an emphasis on social capital. The study was quantitative in nature, applied in terms of purpose, and descriptive regarding the degree of variables control. All farmers around the project area of development and equipping of subsidiary irrigation and draining networks in Ramshir Township in Khuzestan Province (N = 382) formed the population of the study. The sample size was estimated according Cochran formula as 95 people, who were selected randomly as the sample of the study. Data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose face and content validities were confirmed by experts and reliability of different parts of it by calculating the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The results indicated that more than 67% of the subjects studied are in the low and average levels of social capital index. Moreover, the existence of a relatively strong and direct correlation between social capital and the adoption of water user association was another result. Furthermore, social capital, participation in extension courses, and economic motivation were, respectively, the most effective factors in accepting water users association.
This study aimed to determine the challenges of DCPBR (Distribution of Cooperatives Provision Business Requirements). The research has been implemented in two steps. In the first step, the research conceptual framework were extracted by reviewing of the relevant documents. In the second step, by using Delphi technique the challenges of DCPBR were extracted. The respondents of this part were the managing directors of successful DCPBR and experts in the country who were selected by purposive sampling method. The output of the second step were 38 challenges that were categorized under "cooperation and coordination", "governmental supports", "policy- making", "rules and regulations", "competition", "participation", "performance appraisal and reward", "technology", "public making culture", "marketing", "the ability of the management team" and" research and development”. Finally, with paying attention to the extracted challenges some solutions were presented for removing these challenges.