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Spread of Ideas & Behaviours

Ideas and behaviour diffuse through social networks and these dynamics can be modelled using social network analysis. Recently, Volterra has analysed the spread of attitudes relating to recycling and obesity for a major UK supermarket.

 

Volterra has conducted analysis of the spread of attitudes relating to recycling and obesity for a major UK supermarket. The client had invested significant resources in attempting to influence consumers’ opinions by targeting key ‘opinion formers’, but these efforts had proved unsuccessful.  Volterra’s analysis drew on agent-based modelling to investigate the dynamics of information transmission and influence in shaping attitudes to recycling and obesity issues.

Environmental and social topics such as these are characterised by plentiful information from a wide range of sources. However, people often lack the ability to make sense of this abundance of information, relying on the advice of trusted friends, colleagues, or advisors in forming their opinions. Survey data shows that social factors are very influential upon decisions concerning environmental action like recycling and choices related to healthy eating; both systems being undersupplied with clear information and both having been the subject of contradictory messages from ‘authoritative sources’ such as government and the media. This process of social influence complements more purely ‘rational’ forms of choice in which individuals gather large amounts of evidence and analyse it independently before making a decision.

 

Volterra’s analysis highlighted that different social network structures will give rise to different patterns of social influence, where social networks in this context describe who listens or pays attention to whom. The two classes of social network that seem to be especially important in practice are known as ‘small world’ and ‘scale free’.