On modeling social diffusion under the impact of dynamic norms

Abstract

We develop and analyze a collective decision-making model concerning the adoption and diffusion of a novel product, convention, or behavior within a population. Motivated by the growing social psychology literature on dynamic norms, under which an individual is influenced by changing trends in the population, we propose a stochastic model for the decision-making process encompassing two behavioral mechanisms. The first is social influence, which drives coordination among individuals. Consistent with the literature on social diffusion modeling, we capture such a mechanism through an evolutionary game-theoretic framework for a network of interacting individuals. The second, which is the main novelty of our model, represents the impact of dynamic norms, capturing the tendency of individuals to be attracted to products or behaviors with growing popularity. We analytically determine sufficient conditions under which a novel alternative spreads to the majority of the population. Our findings provide insights into the unique and nontrivial role of human sensitivity to dynamic norms in facilitating social diffusion