Externalities and peer effects of collective adoption in networks

摘要

Analyzing complex system with independent sub system is a difficult problem. Socio-technical phenomena are among these type of problems. In the past two decades, agent based modeling and simulation played a significant role in our understanding of complex emergent socio-technical phenomena. Several problems such as adoption of new technology, diffusion of contagious disease and social networks have been explored by using ABMs. One of the major question is with regards to collective outcomes. We believe that collective actions and phenomenon such as mob mentality are harmonized results of peer pressure effect and network externalities effect. In many studies the emphasize is on gauging the equilibrium state. The relaxation time as factor ruling the time gap between each transition is missing in almost all analysis. We try to explore the possibility of combo effect and measure the time to reach consensus in the system. We show that the consensus time depends on network structure and strength of each effect.