scholarly journals From social interactions to private environmental behaviours: The case of consumer food waste

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Piras ◽  
Simone Righi ◽  
Marco Setti ◽  
Nazli Koseoglu ◽  
Matthew Grainger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Food Waste ◽  
Network Effects ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Demographic Groups ◽  
Social Monitoring ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Limited Degree ◽  
Environmental Behaviours

Consumer food waste, like many environmental behaviours, takes place in private, and is not directly subject to social monitoring. Nevertheless, social interactions can affect private opinions and behaviours. This paper builds an agent-based model of interactions between consumers heterogeneous in their sociability, initial opinions and behaviours related to food waste and willingness to consider different opinions, in order to assess how social interactions can affect private behaviours. Compared to existing models of opinion dynamics, we innovate by including a range of ``cognitive dissonance'' between stated opinions and actual behaviours that consumers are willing to accept before changing one of the two. We calibrate the model using questionnaire data on household food waste in Italy. We find that a limited degree of mixing between different socio-demographic groups, namely adult and young consumers, is enough to trigger change, but a certain openness of mind is required from more wasteful individuals. Equally, a small group of environmentally committed consumers can attract a sizeable share of the population towards low-waste behaviours if they show a certain variability of opinions and are willing to compromise with individuals in their close neighbourhood in terms of opinions. These findings can help design effective interventions to promote pro-environmental behaviours, taking advantage of the beneficial network effects while anticipating negative externalities.

scholarly journals From social interactions to private environmental behaviours: The case of consumer food waste

2022 ◽  
Vol 176 ◽  
pp. 105952
Author(s):  
Simone Piras ◽  
Simone Righi ◽  
Marco Setti ◽  
Nazli Koseoglu ◽  
Matthew J. Grainger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Food Waste ◽  
Environmental Behaviours

scholarly journals The Intertwining Impact of Intraorganizational and Routine Networks on Routine Replication Dynamics: An Agent-Based Model

Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dehua Gao ◽  
Flaminio Squazzoni ◽  
Xiuquan Deng
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Network Effects ◽  
Fitness Landscape ◽  
Optimal Combination ◽  
Landscape Model ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Adaptive Changes ◽  
Absorptive Capacities ◽  
Geographically Distributed

Organizational routines are means through which organizations can reutilize best practices and so their replication, i.e., duplicating beneficial routines across context, is a key value-creating strategy. However, it is difficult to map network effects on routine replication. Here, we investigated routine replicating dynamics considering two types of network contexts, namely, (1) connections between different (geographically distributed) units in a decentralized organization and (2) the coupling relation between routines, i.e., a bundle of different routines involved in each unit. By considering routine replication as one kind of template-based activities between different units, we examined interrelations between routines with a NK-based fitness landscape model. Our results show that when there is an appropriate level of absorptive capacities (i.e., when organizations are capable of identifying and acquiring externally generated knowledge), there is an optimal combination of these two types of networks, which is beneficial to routine replicating practices and organization adaptation. Furthermore, we also found that intraorganizational variations, including template-duplicating errors and innovative activities, are instrumental to enhance adaptive changes. Our findings suggest measures to control and manage best practice diffusion across organizations.

scholarly journals Modeling Confirmation Bias and Peer Pressure in Opinion Dynamics

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Longzhao Liu ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Xuyang Chen ◽  
Shaoting Tang ◽  
Zhiming Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
Homogeneous Population ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
The Impact

Confirmation bias and peer pressure are regarded as the main psychology origins of personal opinion adjustment. Each show substantial impacts on the formation of collective decisions. Nevertheless, few attempts have been made to study how the interplay between these two mechanisms affects public opinion evolution on large-scale social networks. In this paper, we propose an agent-based model of opinion dynamics which incorporates the conjugate effect of confirmation bias (characterized by the population identity scope and initiative adaptation speed) and peer pressure (described by a susceptibility threshold and passive adaptation speed). First, a counterintuitive non-monotonous phenomenon arises in the homogeneous population: the number of opinion clusters first increases and then decreases to one as the population identity scope becomes larger. We then consider heterogeneous populations where “impressionable” individuals with large susceptibility to peer pressure and “confident” individuals with small susceptibility coexist. We find that even a small fraction of impressionable individuals could help eliminate public polarization when population identity scope is relatively large. In particular, the impact of impressionable agents would be greater if these agents are hubs. More intriguingly, while impressionable individuals have randomly distributed initial opinions, most of them would finally evolve to moderates. We highlight the emergence of these “impressionable moderates” who are easily influenced, yet are important in public opinion competition, which may inspire efficient strategies in winning competitive campaigns.

scholarly journals Paths to Polarization: How Extreme Views, Miscommunication, and Random Chance Drive Opinion Dynamics

Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Turner ◽  
Paul E. Smaldino
Keyword(s):  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Initial Distribution ◽  
Polarization Measurement ◽  
Cultural Complexity ◽  
Stochastic Variation ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Apparent Reduction ◽  
Path Dependent

Understanding the social conditions that tend to increase or decrease polarization is important for many reasons. We study a network-structured agent-based model of opinion dynamics, extending a model previously introduced by Flache and Macy (2011), who found that polarization appeared to increase with the introduction of long-range ties but decrease with the number of salient opinions, which they called the population’s “cultural complexity.” We find the following. First, polarization is strongly path dependent and sensitive to stochastic variation. Second, polarization depends strongly on the initial distribution of opinions in the population. In the absence of extremists, polarization may be mitigated. Third, noisy communication can drive a population toward more extreme opinions and even cause acute polarization. Finally, the apparent reduction in polarization under increased “cultural complexity” arises via a particular property of the polarization measurement, under which a population containing a wider diversity of extreme views is deemed less polarized. This work has implications for understanding the population dynamics of beliefs, opinions, and polarization as well as broader implications for the analysis of agent-based models of social phenomena.

scholarly journals Countering Protection Rackets Using Legal and Social Approaches: An Agent-Based Test

Complexity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Áron Székely ◽  
Luis G. Nardin ◽  
Giulia Andrighetto
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Social Approach ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The World ◽  
Protection Rackets ◽  
Economic Perspectives ◽  
Legal Strategies

Protection rackets cause economic and social damage across the world. States typically combat protection rackets using legal strategies that target the racketeers with legislation, strong sentencing, and increasing the presence and involvement of police officers. Nongovernmental organizations, conversely, focus on the rest of the population and counter protection rackets using a social approach. These organisations attempt to change the actions and social norms of community members with education, promotional campaigns, and discussions. We use an agent-based model, which draws on established theories of protection rackets and combines features of sociological and economic perspectives to modelling social interactions, to test the effects of legal and social approaches. We find that a legal approach is a necessary component of a policy approach, that social only approaches should not be used because they lead to large increases in violence, and that a combination of the two works best, although even this must be used carefully.

scholarly journals Agent-based modelling to predict policy outcomes: A food waste recycling example

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
A.C. Skeldon ◽  
F. Schiller ◽  
A. Yang ◽  
T. Balke-Visser ◽  
A. Penn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Food Waste ◽  
Waste Recycling ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Agent Based Modelling ◽  
Food Waste Recycling

scholarly journals Reducing C. difficile in children: An agent-based modeling approach to evaluate intervention effectiveness

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 522-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna K. Barker ◽  
Elizabeth Scaria ◽  
Oguzhan Alagoz ◽  
Ajay K. Sethi ◽  
Nasia Safdar
Keyword(s):  
Hand Hygiene ◽  
Infection Prevention ◽  
Tertiary Care ◽  
Substantial Reduction ◽  
Patient Transfers ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Contact Precautions ◽  
Clostridioides Difficile ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Environmental Disinfection

AbstractObjective:Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is rapidly increasing in children’s hospitals nationwide. Thus, we aimed to compare the effectiveness of 9 infection prevention interventions and 6 multiple-intervention bundles at reducing hospital-onset CDI and asymptomatic C. difficile colonization.Design:Agent-based simulation model of C. difficile transmission.Setting:Computer-simulated, 80-bed freestanding, tertiary-care pediatric hospital, including 8 identical wards with 10 single-bed patient rooms each.Participants:The model includes 5 distinct agent types: patients, visitors, caregivers, nurses, and physicians.Interventions:Daily and terminal environmental disinfection, screening at admission, reduced intrahospital patient transfers, healthcare worker (HCW), visitor, and patient hand hygiene, and HCW and visitor contact precautions.Results:The model predicted that daily environmental disinfection with sporicidal product, combined with screening for asymptomatic C. difficile at admission, was the most effective 2-pronged infection prevention bundle, reducing hospital-onset CDI by 62.0% and asymptomatic colonization by 88.4%. Single-intervention strategies, including daily disinfection, terminal disinfection, asymptomatic screening at admission, HCW hand hygiene, and patient hand hygiene, as well as decreasing intrahospital patient transfers, all also reduced both hospital-onset CDI and asymptomatic colonization in the model. Visitor hand hygiene and visitor and HCW contact precautions were not effective at reducing either measure.Conclusions:Hospitals can achieve substantial reduction in hospital-onset CDIs by implementing a small number of highly effective interventions.

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