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Considering baseline homophily when generating spatial social networks for agent-based modelling

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Abstract

Social networks have become an important part of agent-based models, and their structure may have remarkable impact on simulation results. We propose a simple and efficient but empirically based approach for spatial agent-based models which explicitly takes into account restrictions and opportunities imposed by effects of baseline homophily, i.e. the influence of local socio-demography on the composition of one’s social network. Furthermore, the algorithm considers the probability of links that depends on geographical distance between potential partners.

The resulting network reflects social settings and furthermore allows the modeller to influence network properties by adjusting agent type specific parameters. Especially the parameter for distance dependence and the probability of distant links allow for control of clustering and agent type distribution of personal networks.

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Notes

  1. This is true apart from the actor’ popularity in terms of network degree in the case of preferential attachment.

  2. Whereas for the SW generator removing local links dissolves the local lattice structure and may be desired, for the HDD generator it rather disturbs the principle of baseline homophily.

  3. The model is implemented in JAVA using the Repast Simphony framework (North et al. 2007). The code is available at OpenABM.org (search for “Homophily and Distance Depending Network Generation for Modelling Opinion Dynamics”) and can be run on any platform supporting JAVA. Data analysis requires the R framework (R Development Core Team 2010) and the igraph package (Csardi and Nepusz 2006).

  4. Pearson correlations: HDD: 0.86; IDD: 0.66; SW: 0.84.

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Acknowledgements

The research project this work is part of (Klimzug Nordhessen) is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, support code 01LR0809A). We would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that helped a lot to improve the manuscript.

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  1. University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Sascha Holzhauer, Friedrich Krebs & Andreas Ernst

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  1. Sascha Holzhauer
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  2. Friedrich Krebs
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  3. Andreas Ernst
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Correspondence to Sascha Holzhauer.

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Holzhauer, S., Krebs, F. & Ernst, A. Considering baseline homophily when generating spatial social networks for agent-based modelling. Comput Math Organ Theory 19, 128–150 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-012-9145-7

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