This model aims to investigate how different type of learning (social system) and disturbance specific attributes (ecological system) influence adoption of treatment strategies to treat the effects of ecological disturbances.

New theoretical agent-based model of population-wide adoption of prosocial common-pool behavior with four parameters (initial percent of adopters, pressure to change behavior, synergy from behavior, and population density); dynamics in behavior, movement, freeriding, and group composition and size; and emergence of multilevel group selection. Theoretical analysis of model’s dynamics identified six regions in model’s parameter space, in which pressure-synergy combinations lead to different outcomes: extinction, persistence, and full adoption. Simulation results verified the theoretical analysis and demonstrated that increases in density reduce number of pressure-synergy combinations leading to population-wide adoption; initial percent of contributors affects underlying behavior and final outcomes, but not size of regions or transition zones between them; and random movement assists adoption of prosocial common-pool behavior.

The present model is an abstract ABM designed for theoretical exploration and hypotheses generation. Its main aim is to explore the relationship between disagreement over the diagnostic value of evidence and the formation of polarization in scientific communities.
The model represents a scientific community in which scientists aim to determine whether hypothesis H is true, and we assume that agents are in a world in which H is indeed true. To this end, scientists perform experiments, interpret data and exchange their views on how diagnostic of H the obtained evidence is. Based on how the scientists conduct the inquiry, the community may reach a correct consensus (i.e. a situation in which every scientist agrees that H is correct) or not.

AMBAWA simulates the flows of biomass between crop and livestock systems at the field, farm, and village scales in order to showcase innovating management practices of soil fertility in West Africa.

We used our model to test how different combinations of dominance interactions present in H. saltator could result in linear, despotic, or shared hierarchies.

A NetLogo ABM developed to explore unarmed resistance to an active shooter. The landscape is a generalized open outdoor area. Parameters enable the user to set shooter armament and control for assumptions with regard to shooter accuracy.

This model aims to mimic human movement on a realistic topographical surface. The agent does not have a perfect knowledge of the whole surface, but rather evaluates the best path locally, at each step, thus mimicking imperfect human behavior.

A series of studies show the applicability of the NK model in the crowdsourcing research, but it also exposes a problem that the application of the NK model is not tightly integrated with crowdsourcing process, which leads to lack of a basic crowdsourcing simulation model. Accordingly, by introducing interaction relationship among task decisions to define three tasks of different structure: local task, small-world task and random task, and introducing bounded rationality and its two dimensions are taken into account: bounded rationality level that used to distinguish industry types and bounded rationality bias that used to differentiate professional users and ordinary users, an agent-based model that simulates the problem-solving process of tournament-based crowdsourcing is constructed by combining the NK fitness landscapes and the crowdsourcing framework of “Task-Crowd-Process-Evaluation”.

A series of studies show the applicability of the NK model in the crowdsourcing research, but it also exposes a problem that the application of the NK model is not tightly integrated with crowdsourcing process, which leads to lack of a basic crowdsourcing simulation model. Accordingly, by introducing interaction relationship among task decisions to define three tasks of different structure: local task, small-world task and random task, and introducing bounded rationality and its two dimensions are taken into account: bounded rationality level that used to distinguish industry types and bounded rationality bias that used to differentiate professional users and ordinary users, an agent-based model that simulates the problem-solving process of tournament-based crowdsourcing is constructed by combining the NK fitness landscapes and the crowdsourcing framework of “Task-Crowd-Process-Evaluation”.

Schelling famously proposed an extremely simple but highly illustrative social mechanism to understand how strong ethnic segregation could arise in a world where individuals do not necessarily want it. Schelling’s simple computational model is the starting point for our extensions in which we build upon Wilensky’s original NetLogo implementation of this model. Our two NetLogo models can be best studied while reading our chapter “Agent-based Computational Models” (Flache and de Matos Fernandes, 2021). In the chapter, we propose 10 best practices to elucidate how agent-based models are a unique method for providing and analyzing formally precise, and empirically plausible mechanistic explanations of puzzling social phenomena, such as segregation, in the social world. Our chapter addresses in particular analytical sociologists who are new to ABMs.

In the first model (SegregationExtended), we build on Wilensky’s implementation of Schelling’s model which is available in NetLogo library (Wilensky, 1997). We considerably extend this model, allowing in particular to include larger neighborhoods and a population with four groups roughly resembling the ethnic composition of a contemporary large U.S. city. Further features added concern the possibility to include random noise, and the addition of a number of new outcome measures tuned to highlight macro-level implications of the segregation dynamics for different groups in the agent society.

In SegregationDiscreteChoice, we further modify the model incorporating in particular three new features: 1) heterogeneous preferences roughly based on empirical research categorizing agents into low, medium, and highly tolerant within each of the ethnic subgroups of the population, 2) we drop global thresholds (%-similar-wanted) and introduce instead a continuous individual-level single-peaked preference function for agents’ ideal neighborhood composition, and 3) we use a discrete choice model according to which agents probabilistically decide whether to move to a vacant spot or stay in the current spot by comparing the attractiveness of both locations based on the individual preference functions.

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