Behavioral Management In Non-atomic Congestion Games Through Imposing Tolls On Resources

Non-atomic congestion game(NCG)is a particular class of non-cooperative and perfect information games.It is a model to analyze the strategic behavior of players in a population when they are fighting for a set of limited resources,e.g.,the routing games in static traffic.In a non-atomic congestion game,the selfish behavior of players will lead to a pure Nash equilibrium,which is a stable state but usually inefficient.Thus suitable behavioral management in NCG is probably needed.This article concerns behavioral management through imposing tolls on resources.In the previous studies,a approach to compute tolls was proposed,which can guide players to choose the strategies minimizing social cost in total,i.e.,System Optimum(SO).However,in order to achieve such overall efficiency,issue of unfairness may raise.To take both overall efficiency and fairness into account,this article will further investigate on the behavior management.According to previous research,if a congestion is minimum feasible,then it is enforceable by tolls.We will propose sufficient and necessary conditions of minimum feasibility,to show that Constrained System Optimum(CSO)is enforceable.We propose a general paradigm for computing tolls weakly enforcing an arbitrary feasible congestion.Our theory forms an integrated approach to behaviorial management using tolls.In particular,it may provide an integrated tolling(or tax)policy that can guide players to occupy resources in more reasonable way.