In professional sports, the amounts disbursed in rank-based prize money distributions decline sharply, and differences in performance are extremely small. This disparity may provide a high incentive for doping. Due to the complexity of doping, obtaining meaningful insights on the influence of prize money distribution and the pecuniary value of prize money on doping behaviour of elite athletes using game theory or other approaches has not been possible. The authors perform a computerised social simulation through agent-based modelling to analyse doping behaviour in competitive sport. The results show that the distribution of prize money in particular has an enormous impact on the prevalence of doping. By contrast, the total amount of prize money is less decisive for doping behaviour. Further, doping costs are observed to have only a marginal effect on doping prevalence, depending on the tested prize money distribution and its amount. The simulation results can be used by sports federations and competition organisers who should distribute the prize money more evenly to all athletes to reduce doping.

在职业体育中，基于等级的奖金分配中的支付金额急剧下降，并且成绩差异很小。这种差异可以为掺杂提供很高的诱因。由于兴奋剂的复杂性，不可能通过博弈论或其他方法获得有关奖金分配和奖金金钱价值对精英运动员兴奋剂行为的有意义的见解。作者通过基于代理的模型执行计算机化的社会模拟，以分析竞技运动中的兴奋剂行为。结果表明，特别是奖金的分配对掺杂的发生率具有巨大的影响。相比之下，总奖金金额对掺杂行为的决定性较小。进一步，根据所测试的奖金分配及其金额，观察到掺杂成本对掺杂发生率仅具有边际影响。体育联合会和比赛组织者可以使用模拟结果，他们应将奖金更均匀地分配给所有运动员以减少兴奋剂。