  The nature of dispersal of many invasive pests and pathogens in agricultural
and forestry makes it necessary to consider how the actions of one manager
affect neighbouring properties. In addition to the direct effects of a
potential spread of a pest and the resulting economic loss, there are also
indirect consequences that affect whole regions and that require coordinated
actions to manage and/or to eradicate it (like movement restrictions). In this
paper we address the emergence and stability of cooperation among agents who
respond to a threat of an invasive pest or disease. The model, based on the
weakest-link paradigm, uses repeated multi-participant coordination games where
players' pay-offs depend on management decisions to prevent the invasion on
their own land as well as of their neighbours on a network. We show that for
the basic cooperation game agents select the risk-dominant strategy of a Stag
hunt game over the pay-off dominant strategy of implementing control measures.
However, cooperation can be achieved by the social planner offering a
biosecurity payment. The critical level of this payment depends on the details
of the decision-making process, with higher trust (based on a reputation of
other agents reflecting their past performance) allowing a significant
reduction in necessary payments and slowing down decay in cooperation when the
payment is low. We also find that allowing for uncertainty in decision-making
process can enhance cooperation for low levels of payments. Finally, we show
the importance of industry structure to the emergence of cooperation, with
increase in the average coordination number of network nodes leading to
increase in the critical biosecurity payment.
