Information sharing can suppress the spread of epidemics: Voluntary vaccination game on two-layer networks.

It is known that the vaccination is essential for suppressing the periodic prevalence of an infectious disease, while the vaccination decision is influenced by external factors. Whether or not to take vaccination depends not only on the expected benefit of individual, but also on the behavior of others. Nowadays, the speed of information transmission on the social media is fast with wide range, which extremely expands the scope of imitation, but it is unknown whether it is beneficial to vaccination. Inspired by this situation, a vaccination game model on two-layer network which increases the intensity of information sharing is proposed. The vaccination game layer and the information sharing layer are established to study the interaction between individual vaccination decisions and strategic exchanges. We find that although information sharing has inhibited individual vaccination decisions to some extent, the overall scale of disease spreading in society has decreased with increasing information sharing. • A new mechanism, information sharing, in evolutionary vaccination game is introduced. • The vaccination game model in two-layer network are taken into account. • The spread of epidemics is effectively suppressed under the information sharing mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]