期刊名称：Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
印刷版ISSN：1460-7425
出版年度：2021
卷号：24
期号：1
页码：1
DOI：10.18564/jasss.4479
出版社：University of Surrey, Department of Sociology
摘要：The behavior of a heterogeneous population of individuals during an emergency, such as epidemics, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, is dynamic, emergent and complex. In this situation, reducing uncertainty about the event is crucial in order to identify and pursue the best possible course of action. People depend on experts, government sources, the media and fellow community members as potentially valid sources of information to reduce uncertainty, but their messages can be ambiguous, misleading or contradictory. Eective risk prevention depends on the way in which the population receives, elaborates and spread the message, and together these elements result in a collective perception of risk. The interaction between individuals’ attitudes toward risk and institutions, the more or less alarmist way in which the information is reported and the role of the media can lead to risk perception that diers from the original message, as well as to contrasting opinions about risk within the same population. The aim of this study is to bridge a model of opinion dynamics with the issue of uncertainty and trust in the sources, in order to understand the determinants of collective risk assessment. Our results show that alarming information spreads more easily than reassuring one, and that the media plays a key role in this. Concerning the role of internal variables, our simulation results show that risk sensitiveness has more influence on the final opinion than trust towards the institutional message. Furthermore, the role of dierent network structures seems to be negligible, even on two empirically calibrated network topologies, thus suggesting that knowing beforehand how much the public trusts their institutional representatives and how reactive they are to a certain risk might provide useful indications to design more eective communication strategies during crises.
关键词：Risk Perceptions; Opinion Dynamics; Social Influence; Agent-Based Model
