From Personal Attitudes to Public Opinion Information Diffusion in Social Networks Toward Sustainable Transportation

A model of a social network-based attitude diffusion system in the context of activity and travel choice behavior is presented. The principal mechanisms contributing to attitude formation were identified, and mathematical models to capture these processes were developed. The primary contributions of this research are (a) the modeling of attitude diffusion according to social and learning mechanisms and (b) the evolution of these attitudes over time in a lattice neighborhood social network. The agent-based framework presented is sufficiently general and flexible to allow the building of a more complete representation of information diffusion and attitude formation within activity and travel behavior choice dimensions, for example, mode choice or departure time choice. The framework allows the extension of the presented approach with additional social network structures, information sources, and social interaction mechanisms in the physical and virtual realms or the extension and modification of the presented approach to simulate the impact of information-based management strategies.