Vaccination-transmission coupled mechanism based on parallel minority game

Vaccination is a key strategy to curb the spread of epidemics. Heterologous vaccination, unlike homologous vaccination which acts on a single target and forms a single immune barrier, covers multiple targets for broader protection. Yet, heterologous vaccination involves a complex decision process that conventional game-theoretic approaches, such as classical, evolutionary, and minority games cannot adequately capture. The parallel minority game (PMG) can handle bounded-rational, multi-choice decisions, but its application in vaccine research remains rare. In this study, we propose a vaccination-transmission coupled dynamic mechanism based on the parallel minority game and simulate it on a two-dimensional lattice. Using actual observational data and a mean-field mathematical model, we verify the effectiveness of this mechanism in simulating realistic vaccination behavior and transmission dynamics. We further analyze the impact of key parameters, such as vaccine efficacy differences and the proportion of individuals eligible for vaccine switching, on containment effectiveness. Our results demonstrate that heterologous vaccination surpasses homologous vaccination in containment effectiveness, particularly when vaccine efficacy varies significantly. This work provides a novel framework and empirical evidence for understanding individual decision-making and population-wide immunity formation in multi-vaccine settings.