Game-Theoretic Frameworks for Epidemic Spreading and Human Decision Making: A Review

This review presents and reviews various solved and open problems in developing, analyzing, and mitigating epidemic spreading processes under human decision-making. We provide a review of a range of epidemic models and explain the pros and cons of different epidemic models. We exhibit the art of coupling epidemic models and decision models in the existing literature. {More specifically, we provide answers to fundamental questions in human decision-making amid epidemics, including what interventions to take to combat the disease, who are decision-makers, when to take interventions, and how to make interventions.} Among many decision models, game-theoretic models have become increasingly crucial in modeling human responses/behavior amid epidemics in the last decade. In this review, we motivate the game-theoretic approach to human decision-making amid epidemics. This review provides an overview of the existing literature by developing a multi-dimensional taxonomy, which categorizes existing literature based on multiple dimensions, including 1) types of games, such as differential games, stochastic games, evolutionary games, and static games; 2) types of interventions, such as social distancing, vaccination, quarantine, taking antidotes, etc.; 3) the types of decision-makers, such as individuals, adversaries, and central authorities at different hierarchical levels. A fine-grained dynamic game framework is proposed to capture the essence of game-theoretic decision-making amid epidemics. We showcase three representative {frameworks} with unique ways of integrating game-theoretic decision-making into the epidemic models from a vast body of literature. {Each of the three framework has a unique way of modeling, conducting analytical analysis, and deriving results.} In the end, we identify several main open problems and research gaps left to be addressed and filled.