Anonymous communication for encouraging the reporting of wrongdoing in social groups

We propose an application of DC-net called Layered DC-net for encouraging the reporting of wrongdoing in social groups. A social group is a set of individuals, structured into layered subgroups. Individuals are divided into subgroups called lower groups. One of the individuals in each lower group is a representative who has authority and responsibility for the lower group. The set of all representatives from all lower groups is called the upper group. In social groups, wrongdoing (e.g., bullying in schools) occasionally occurs. If individuals in a lower group discover wrongdoing, they should report it to their representative. Meanwhile, all representatives are responsible for settling wrongdoing. However, once individuals reporting such wrongdoing and their representative are identified, the payoffs for both are smaller than those for individuals who do not report it. We focus on reporting bullying in a school as an example of reporting wrongdoing in social groups. By using game theory, we formulate a game among bystanders of bullying in a lower group and another game among teachers in the upper group. We evaluate the games with and without the Layered DC-net. The results show that the Layered DC-net implements the Nash equilibria that encourage the reporting of wrongdoing in both lower and upper groups and settles wrongdoing in the social group.