Abstract
Representative members who make laws and heads of local governments are elected by citizens in Japan. Therefore, elections are one of the most important factors in future political or economic trends. There are a lot of researchers, such as social psychologists and political scientists, focusing on voters’ decision-making processes. It has been known that voters collect information from others or mass media to decide who to vote for. The rapid spread of information and communication technologies in recent years, such as the spread of the Internet, has increased the expansion of communication space. However, it is difficult to observe how voters make political decisions. In this paper, we propose a simulation model based on both Latane’s dynamic social impact theory (DSIT) simulation model and Riker and Ordeshook’s expected utility model of voting behavior to analyze political decision-making by using multi-agent simulation. Agents in the proposed model communicate with order utility that is based on ambiguity in communicating information. Agents are generated from a database of public opinion polls. Then, agents are given social attributes and values of political parties. The agents’ communication space is a hierarchical network constructed by agents that have the same or similar attributes. In the experiment, we compared simulation results with the actual results from voting in an experiment and examined the validity of the proposed model. Moreover, we analyzed the effect of expanding communication space on voters’ political decision-making in the experiment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Adachi, T., Hizen, Y.: Political Economy Analysis of Mass Media and Voting Behavior: A Survey, KIER Discussion Paper, Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University, vol. 1112 (2011) (in Japanese)
Downs, A.: An economic theory of democracy. Haper Collins, New York (1957)
Prat, A., Stromberg, D.: The Political Economy of Mass Media. CEPR Discussion Papers, No.DP8246 (2011)
Shimura, M., Kobayashi, T., Murakami, F.: Does extending social networks help a minority to survive?: On the introduction of information about distant others to a DSIT simulation. The Japanese Society of Social Psychology, Japanese Journal of Social Psychology (Before 1996, Research in Social Psychology) 21(1), 32–43 (2005) (in Japanese)
Ishiguro, I., Yasuno, S., Shibanai, Y.: Application of global information as generalized other to computer simulation of Dynamic Social Impact Theory. The Japanese Society of Social Psychology, Japanese Journal of Social Psychology (Before 1996, Research in Social Psychology) 16(2), 114–123 (2000) (in Japanese)
Sudo, Y., Mutoh, A., Kato, S.: Analyzing the impact of order utility in political decision-making on voting by using multi-agent simulatio. In: JAWS 2012, p. C4-1 (2012) (in Japanese)
Murakami, M., Tanida, N.: An Agent Based Modeling for the Formation of Public Opinion and its Effect on Japanese Public Pension System, Kansai University, vol. 59 (2008) (in Japanese)
Latané, B., Nowak, A., Liu, J.: Measuring emergent social phenomena: Dynamism,polarization,and clustering as order parameters of social systems. Behavioral Science 39, 1–24 (1994)
Riker, W., Ordeshook, P.: A Theory of the Calculus of Voting. American Political Science Review 62(1), 25–42 (1968)
Konishi, K., Murata, T., Natori, R.: Voting Simulation for Improving Voter Turnout and Reducing the Number of Polling Places. Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics 22(2), 203–210 (2010) (in Japanese)
Ida, M.: Possibility Valuation based on Oridinal Utility. Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and intelligent informatics 7(6), 1175–1185 (1995) (in Japanese)
Ishiguro, I.: Attitude homophily and relational selectability: An analysis of dyadic data. The Japanese Society of Social Psychology, Japanese Journal of Social Psychology (Before 1996, Research in Social Psychology) 27(1), 13–23 (2011) (in Japanese)
Watts, D.J., Strogatz, S.H.: Collective dynamics of small-world networks. Nature 393(4), 440–442 (1998)
Masuda, N., Konno, N.: Introduction to complex networks. Sangyotosyo (2005) (in Japanese)
Tsuda, H.: Analysis about the Effect of the Internet to Constructing Process of Business Ethics. Bulletin of the Management Research Institute 15, 59–78 (2008) (in Japanese)
Marden, J.I.: Analyzing and Modeling Rank Data. Monographs on statistics and applied probability, vol. 64. Chapman & Hall (1995)
Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berelson, B., Gaudet, H.: The people’s choice: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign, 3rd edn. Columbia University Press, Columbia University Press (1968)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sudo, Y., Kato, S., Mutoh, A. (2013). The Impact of Exchanging Opinions in Political Decision-Making on Voting by Using Multi-agent Simulation. In: Boella, G., Elkind, E., Savarimuthu, B.T.R., Dignum, F., Purvis, M.K. (eds) PRIMA 2013: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8291. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-44927-7_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-44927-7_23
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-44926-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-44927-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)