Enough but not too many: A bi-threshold model for behavioral diffusion.

ABSTRACT: Behavioral diffusion is commonly modeled with the linear threshold model, which assumes that individuals adopt a behavior when enough of their social contacts do so. We observe, however, that in many common empirical settings individuals also appear to abandon a behavior when too many of their close contacts exhibit it. The bi-threshold model captures this tendency by adding an upper threshold, which, when exceeded, triggers behavioral disadoption. Here we report an empirical test of the bi-threshold model. We overcome the significant challenge of estimating individuals' heterogeneous thresholds by extending a recently introduced decision-tree based algorithm to the bi-threshold setting. Using the context of the spread of news about three different topics on social media (the Higgs boson,

SUBMITTER: Alipour F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11495329 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature