_{An Information Source Selection Model Based on Evolutionary Game Theory}

Information source selection (ISS) is ubiquitous across a myriad of scientific disciplines. Previous studies mainly viewed the issue of ISS as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem, and therefore used MCDM methods to investigate it. However, many important aspects, for example, the dynamic process of ISS, the impact of different kinds of factors on ISS, and the stability of the solution of ISS, have not attracted enough attention and are still lacked of deep investigation. In this paper, an evolutionary game model is proposed to study this issue from theoretical perspective. That is to say, an ISS game is developed to formalize the interaction relationship between information sources, and replicator equation about population dynamics is used to mimick the dynamically evolutionary process in ISS. Within the proposed model, two kinds of factors, subjective factors and objective factors, have been separately considered and their respective influence on ISS has been distinguished. Furthermore, the dynamic process of ISS is presented clearly, and the stability of the solution is also investigated mathematically. Illustrative examples show that the proposed model sheds new light into the issue of ISS.