Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 16: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics

SOE 16.5: Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 16:30–16:45, MA 001

Rigorous Agent-Based Modeling is critical: Modeling the diffusion of green products and practices — •Angelika Abramiuk-Szurlej, Mikołaj Szurlej, and Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron — Wrocław University of Science and Technology, 50-370 Wrocław, Poland

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is gaining popularity in the field of managing pro-environmental behavior change. In the field of ecology, it is a well-established and rigorous scientific method. However, within social sciences, it is often criticized for its lack of rigor. We demonstrate how best practices from ABM in ecology can be applied to the study of pro-environmental social change. We argue that the two stages of ABM, namely description and verification, are fundamental for establishing ABM as a rigorous research method. Therefore, we provide a practical illustration of how to effectively execute these stages using an example of a model introduced in 2016 to study the diffusion of green products and practices. We describe the model using the ODD (Overview, Design concepts, Details) protocol. Furthermore, we present two different approaches to model analysis borrowed from the theory of complex systems to ensure rigorous model verification. We also clarify the circumstances under which the agent-based model can be reduced to an analytical model and when such reduction is not feasible. Finally, we present new results for the model that have not been previously reported. Specifically, we demonstrate that the model effectively replicates patterns observed in the real diffusion of innovations, including the S-shaped curve and the concept of critical mass.

Keywords: pro-environmental behavior change; agent-based model; ODD protocol; pair approximation; mean-field approximation