The model simulates the diffusion of four low-carbon energy technologies among households: photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, and home batteries. We model household decision making as the decision marking of one person, the agent. The agent decides whether to adopt these technologies. Hereby, the model can be used to study co-adoption behaviour, thereby going beyond traditional diffusion models that focus on the adop-tion of single technologies. The combination of these technologies is of particular interest be-cause (1) using the energy generated by PV solar panels for EVs and heat pumps can reduce emissions associated with transport and heating, respectively, and (2) EVs, heat pumps, and home batteries can help to integrate PV solar panels in local electricity grids by offering flexible demand (EVs and heat pumps) and energy storage (home batteries and EVs), thereby reducing grid impacts and associated upgrading costs.

The purpose of the model is to represent realistic adoption and co-adoption behaviour. This is achieved by grounding the decision model on the risks-as-feelings model (Loewenstein et al., 2001), theory from environmental and social psychology, and empirically informing agent be-haviour by survey-data among 1469 people in the Swiss region Romandie.

The model can be used to construct scenarios for the diffusion of the four low-carbon energy technologies depending on different contexts, and as a virtual experimentation environment for ex ante evaluation of policy interventions to stimulate adoption and co-adoption.

The targeted subsidies plan model is based on the economic concept of targeted subsidies.

The targeted subsidies plan model simulates the distribution of subsidies among households in a community over several years. The model assumes that the government allocates a fixed amount of money each year for the purpose of distributing cash subsidies to eligible households. The eligible households are identified by dividing families into 10 groups based on their income, property, and wealth. The subsidy is distributed to the first four groups, with the first group receiving the highest subsidy amount. The model simulates the impact of the subsidy distribution process on the income and property of households in the community over time.

The model simulates a community of 230 households, each with a household income and wealth that follows a power-law distribution. The number of household members is modeled by a normal distribution. The model allocates a fixed amount of money each year for the purpose of distributing cash subsidies among eligible households. The eligible households are identified by dividing families into 10 groups based on their income, property, and wealth. The subsidy is distributed to the first four groups, with the first group receiving the highest subsidy amount.
The model runs for a period of 10 years, with the subsidy distribution process occurring every month. The subsidy received by each household is assumed to be spent, and a small portion may be saved and added to the household’s property. At the end of each year, the grouping of households based on income and assets is redone, and a number of families may be moved from one group to another based on changes in their income and property.
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This purpose of this model is to understand how the coupled demographic dynamics of herds and households constrain the growth of livestock populations in pastoral systems.

This is an extension of the original RAGE model (Dressler et al. 2018), where we add learning capabilities to agents, specifically learning-by-doing and social learning (two processes central to adaptive (co-)management).

The extension module is applied to smallholder farmers’ decision-making - here, a pasture (patch) is the private property of the household (agent) placed on it and there is no movement of the households. Households observe the state of the pasture and their neighrbours to make decisions on how many livestock to place on their pasture every year. Three new behavioural types are created (which cannot be combined with the original ones): E-RO (baseline behaviour), E-LBD (learning-by-doing) and E-RO-SL1 (social learning). Similarly to the original model, these three types can be compared regarding long-term social-ecological performance. In addition, a global strategy switching option (corresponding to double-loop learning) allows users to study how behavioural strategies diffuse in a heterogeneous population of learning and non-learning agents.

An important modification of the original model is that extension agents are heterogeneous in how they deal with uncertainty. This is represented by an agent property, called the r-parameter (household-risk-att in the code). The r-parameter is catch-all for various factors that form an agent’s disposition to act in a certain way, such as: uncertainty in the sensing (partial observability of the resource system), noise in the information received, or an inherent characteristic of the agent, for instance, their risk attitude.

The fight against poverty is an urgent global challenge. Microinsurance is promoted as a valuable instrument for buffering income losses due to health or climate-related risks of low-income households in developing countries. However, apart from direct positive effects they can have unintended side effects when insured households lower their contribution to traditional arrangements where risk is shared through private monetary support.

RiskNetABM is an agent-based model that captures dynamics between income losses, insurance payments and informal risk-sharing. The model explicitly includes decisions about informal transfers. It can be used to assess the impact of insurance products and informal risk-sharing arrangements on the resilience of smallholders. Specifically, it allows to analyze whether and how economic needs (i.e. level of living costs) and characteristics of extreme events (i.e. frequency, intensity and type of shock) influence the ability of insurance and informal risk-sharing to buffer income shocks. Two types of behavior with regard to private monetary transfers are explicitly distinguished: (1) all households provide transfers whenever they can afford it and (2) insured households do not show solidarity with their uninsured peers.

The model is stylized and is not used to analyze a particular case study, but represents conditions from several regions with different risk contexts where informal risk-sharing networks between smallholder farmers are prevalent.

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The Land Use Competition in Drylands (LUCID) model is a stylized agent-based model of a smallholder farming system. Its main purpose is to illustrate how competition between pastoralism and crop cultivation can affect livelihoods of households, specifically their food security. In particular, the model analyzes whether the expansion of crop cultivation may contribute to a vicious circle where an increase in cultivated area leads to higher grazing pressure on the remaining pastureland, which in turn may cause forage shortages and livestock loss for households which are then forced to further expand their cultivated area in order to increase their food security. The model does not attempt to replicate a particular case study but to generate a general understanding of mechanisms and drivers of such vicious circles and to identify possible scenarios under which such circles may be prevented.

The model is inspired by observations of the Borana land use system in Southern Ethiopia. The climatic and ecological conditions of the Borana zone favor pastoralism, and traditionally livelihoods have been based mainly on livestock keeping. Recent years, however, have seen an advancement of crop cultivation as a coping strategy, e.g., to compensate the loss of livestock, even though crop yields are low on average and successful harvests are infrequent.

In the model, it is possible to evaluate patterns of individual (single household) as well as overall (across all households) consumption and food security, depending on a range of ecological, climatic and management parameters.

An agent-based model of individual consumers making choices between five possible diets: omnivore, flexitarian, pescatarian, vegetarian, or vegan. Each consumer makes decisions based on personal constraints and values, and their perceptions of how well each diet matches with those values. Consumers can also be influenced by each other’s perceptions via interaction across three social networks: household members, friends, and acquaintances.

The Price Evolution with Expectations model provides the opportunity to explore the question of non-equilibrium market dynamics, and how and under which conditions an economic system converges to the classically defined economic equilibrium. To accomplish this, we bring together two points of view of the economy; the classical perspective of general equilibrium theory and an evolutionary perspective, in which the current development of the economic system determines the possibilities for further evolution.

The Price Evolution with Expectations model consists of a representative firm producing no profit but producing a single good, which we call sugar, and a representative household which provides labour to the firm and purchases sugar.The model explores the evolutionary dynamics whereby the firm does not initially know the household demand but eventually this demand and thus the correct price for sugar given the household’s optimal labour.

The model can be run in one of two ways; the first does not include money and the second uses money such that the firm and/or the household have an endowment that can be spent or saved. In either case, the household has preferences for leisure and consumption and a demand function relating sugar and price, and the firm has a production function and learns the household demand over a set number of time steps using either an endogenous or exogenous learning algorithm. The resulting equilibria, or fixed points of the system, may or may not match the classical economic equilibrium.

The HERB model simulates the retrofit behavior of homeowners in a neighborhood. The model initially parameterizes a neighborhood and households with technical factors such as energy standard, the availability of subsidies, and neighbors’ retrofit activity. Then, these factors are translated into psychological variables such as perceived comfort gain, worry about affording the retrofit, and perceiving the current energy standard of the home as wasteful. These psychological variables moderate the transition between four different stages of deciding to retrofit, as suggested by a behavioral model specific to household energy retrofitting identified based on a large population survey in Norway. The transition between all stages eventually leads to retrofitting, which affects both the household’s technical factors and friends and neighbors, bringing the model “full circle”. The model assumes that the energy standard of the buildings deteriorates over time, forcing households to retrofit regularly to maintain a certain energy standard.

Because experiment datafiles are about 15GB, they are available at https://doi.org/10.18710/XOSAMD

ReMoTe-S is an agent-based model of the residential mobility of Swiss tenants. Its goal is to foster a holistic understanding of the reciprocal influence between households and dwellings and thereby inform a sustainable management of the housing stock. The model is based on assumptions derived from empirical research conducted with three housing providers in Switzerland and can be used mainly for two purposes: (i) the exploration of what if scenarios that target a reduction of the housing footprint while accounting for households’ preferences and needs; (ii) knowledge production in the field of residential mobility and more specifically on the role of housing functions as orchestrators of the relocation process.