abstract: 'Computational social science has seen a shift from theoretical models to
  empirical agent-based models (ABMs) grounded in data-driven correlations between
  behavioral factors defining agents'' decisions. The community''s interest in theoretical
  ABMs with behavioral theories setting stylized rules that guide agents'' actions
  is fading, especially when it concerns policy-related simulations. However, it remains
  unclear to what extent theory-driven ABMs mislead, if at all, possible policy decisions
  when compared to the outcomes of models with empirical micro-foundations. This is
  especially relevant for pro-environemntal policies that increasingly rely on quantifying
  cumulative effects of individual behavioral changes, where ABMs are so useful. To
  address this methodological dilemma, we propose a comparison framework to quantitatively
  explore the differences between theory- and data-driven ABMs. Inspired by the existing
  theory-based model, ORVin-T, which studies the individual choice between organic
  and conventional products, we designed a survey to collect data on individual preferences
  and purchasing decisions. We then used this extensive empirical microdata to build
  an empirical twin, ORVin-E, replacing the theoretical assumptions and secondary
  aggregated data used to parametrize agents'' decision strategies with empirical
  survey data. We compare the models in terms of key outputs, perform sensitivity
  analysis and three policy scenario. '
authors:
- affiliation: University of Technology Sydney
  email: firouzeh.th@gmail.com
  family-names: Taghikhah
  given-names: Firouzeh
  orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0851-6816
- affiliation: TU Delft
  email: t.filatova@tudelft.nl
  family-names: Filatova
  given-names: Tatiana
- affiliation: University of Technology Sydney
  email: Alexey.Voinov@uts.edu.au
  family-names: Voinov
  given-names: Alexey
cff-version: 1.2.0
identifiers:
- type: url
  value: https://www.comses.net/codebases/699dff41-e494-4dbc-90a0-dea713925bd9/releases/1.0.0/
keywords:
- consumer behavior
- model comparison
license: GPL-2.0
message: If you use this software, please cite it using the metadata from this file.
title: A comparison of theory-driven and empirical agent-based models
type: software
url: https://www.comses.net/codebases/699dff41-e494-4dbc-90a0-dea713925bd9/releases/1.0.0/
version: 1.0.0
