  Individual migration has been regarded as an important factor for the
evolution of cooperation in mobile populations. Motivations of migration,
however, can be largely divergent: one is highly frustrated by the vicinity of
an exploiter or defector, while other enthusiastically searches cooperator
mates. Albeit both extreme attitudes are observed in human behavior, but their
specific impacts on wellbeing remained unexplored. In this work, we propose an
orientation-driven migration approach for mobile individuals in combination
with the mentioned migration preferences and study their roles in the
cooperation level in a two-dimensional public goods game. We find that
cooperation can be greatly promoted when individuals are more inclined to
escape away from their defective neighbors. On the contrary, cooperation cannot
be effectively maintained when individuals are more motivated to approach their
cooperative neighbors. In addition, compared with random migration, movement by
leaving defectors can promote cooperation more effectively. By means of
theoretical analysis and numerical calculations, we further find that when
individuals only choose to escape away from their defective neighbors, the
average distance between cooperators and defectors can be enlarged, hence the
natural invasion of defection can be efficiently blocked. Our work, thus,
provides further insight on how different migration preferences influence the
evolution of cooperation in the unified framework of spatially social games.
