Schelling famously proposed an extremely simple but highly illustrative social mechanism to understand how strong ethnic segregation could arise in a world where individuals do not necessarily want it. Schelling’s simple computational model is the starting point for our extensions in which we build upon Wilensky’s original NetLogo implementation of this model. Our two NetLogo models can be best studied while reading our chapter “Agent-based Computational Models” (Flache and de Matos Fernandes, 2021). In the chapter, we propose 10 best practices to elucidate how agent-based models are a unique method for providing and analyzing formally precise, and empirically plausible mechanistic explanations of puzzling social phenomena, such as segregation, in the social world. Our chapter addresses in particular analytical sociologists who are new to ABMs.

In the first model (SegregationExtended), we build on Wilensky’s implementation of Schelling’s model which is available in NetLogo library (Wilensky, 1997). We considerably extend this model, allowing in particular to include larger neighborhoods and a population with four groups roughly resembling the ethnic composition of a contemporary large U.S. city. Further features added concern the possibility to include random noise, and the addition of a number of new outcome measures tuned to highlight macro-level implications of the segregation dynamics for different groups in the agent society.

In SegregationDiscreteChoice, we further modify the model incorporating in particular three new features: 1) heterogeneous preferences roughly based on empirical research categorizing agents into low, medium, and highly tolerant within each of the ethnic subgroups of the population, 2) we drop global thresholds (%-similar-wanted) and introduce instead a continuous individual-level single-peaked preference function for agents’ ideal neighborhood composition, and 3) we use a discrete choice model according to which agents probabilistically decide whether to move to a vacant spot or stay in the current spot by comparing the attractiveness of both locations based on the individual preference functions.

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Aroused public opinion has led to public debates on social responsibility issues in food supply chains. This model based op opinion dynamics and the linkages between involved actors simulates the public debate leading to the transitions.

The purpose of this agent-based model is to explore the emergent phenomena associated with scientific publication, including quantity and quality, from different academic types based on their publication strategies.

The Axelrod’s model of cultural dissemination is an agent-model designed to investigate the dissemination of culture among interacting agents on a society.

Chicago’s demographic, neighborhood, sex risk behaviors, sexual network data, and HIV prevention and treatment cascade information from 2015 were integrated as input to a new agent-based model (ABM) called the Levers-of-HIV-Model (LHM). This LHM, written in NetLogo, forms patterns of sexual relations among Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) based on static traits (race/ethnicity, and age) and dynamic states (sexual relations and practices) that are found in Chicago. LHM’s five modules simulate and count new infections at the two marker years of 2023 and 2030 for a wide range of distinct scenarios or levers, in which the levels of PrEP and ART linkage to care, retention, and adherence or viral load are increased over time from the 2015 baseline levels.

a computer-based role-playing game simulating the interactions between farming activities, livestock herding and wildlife in a virtual landscape reproducing local socioecological dynamics at the periphery of Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe).

This model implements a Bayesian belief revision model that contrasts an ideal agent in possesion of true likelihoods, an agent using a fixed estimate of trusting its source of information, and an agent updating its trust estimate.

This model expands approaches from social practice theories and is used to investigate the ability of the underlying conceptual model to explain the emergence of social practices, defined as routine behaviour that is similar amoung peers.

We provide an agent-based model of collective action, informed by Granovetter (1978) and its replication model by Siegel (2009). We use the model to examine the role of ICTs in collective action under different cultural and political contexts.

This model is to simulate and compare the admission effects of 3 school matching mechanisms, serial dictatorship, Boston mechanism, and Chinese Parallel, under different settings of information released.