Benefits of Diversity, Communication Costs, and Public Opinion Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper models public opinion dynamics considering diversity benefits and communication costs, revealing how opinions evolve and cluster over time based on individual thresholds influenced by cost-benefit analyses.

Contribution

It extends continuous-opinion models by incorporating evolving thresholds driven by individual cost-benefit considerations, providing new insights into opinion clustering and formation times.

Findings

Clarifies and deepens previous opinion dynamics models

Establishes new results on opinion patterns in the asymptotic state

Analyzes cluster formation time in opinion evolution

Abstract

We study the dynamics of public opinion in a model in which agents change their opinions as a result of random binary encounters if the opinion difference is below their individual thresholds that evolve over time. We ground these thresholds in a simple individual cost-benefit analysis with linear benefits of diversity and quadratic communication costs. We clarify and deepen the results of earlier continuous-opinion dynamics models (Deffuant et al., Adv Complex Systems 2000; Weisbuch et al., Complexity 2002) and establish several new results regarding the patterns of opinions in the asymptotic state and the cluster formation time.