A network-based microfoundation of Granovetter's threshold model for social tipping

Abstract

Social tipping, where minorities trigger larger populations to engage in collective action, has been suggested as one key aspect in addressing contemporary global challenges. Here, we refine Granovetter's widely acknowledged theoretical threshold model of collective behavior as a numerical modelling tool for understanding social tipping processes and resolve issues that so far have hindered such applications. Based on real-world observations and social movement theory, we group the population into certain or potential actors, such that -- in contrast to its original formulation -- the model predicts non-trivial final shares of acting individuals. Then, we use a network cascade model to explain and analytically derive that previously hypothesized broad threshold distributions emerge if individuals become active via social interaction. Thus, through intuitive parameters and low dimensionality our refined model is adaptable to explain the likelihood of engaging in collective behavior where social tipping like processes emerge as saddle-node bifurcations and hysteresis.

References in corpus (10)

• Emergence of scaling in random networks
• Universal behavior in a generalized model of contagion
• A generalized model of social and biological contagion
• Evidence of Complex Contagion of Information in Social Media: An Experiment Using Twitter Bots
• The Spontaneous Emergence of Conventions: An Experimental Study of Cultural Evolution
• Binary-state dynamics on complex networks: pair approximation and beyond
• Complex contagion process in spreading of online innovation
• Multi-Stage Complex Contagions
• Local cascades induced global contagion: How heterogeneous thresholds, exogenous effects, and unconcerned behaviour govern online adoption spreading
• Macroscopic description of complex adaptive networks co-evolving with dynamic node states

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Social tipping processes for sustainability: An analytical framework
• Anticipation-induced social tipping -- Can the environment be stabilised by social dynamics?
• Statistical Analysis of Tipping Pathways in Agent-Based Models
• A dynamic network model of societal complexity and resilience inspired by Tainter's theory of collapse
• Topological data analysis of truncated contagion maps
• Competitive Social Mobilization in Threshold Models of Collective Action