Agenda

Daniel Torren Peraire - An agent-based model of cultural change for a low-carbon transition

Abstract
Meeting climate goals requires radical changes in the consumption behaviours of individuals. This necessitates an understanding of how the diffusion of low-carbon behaviours will occur. The speed and inter-dependency of these changes in behavioural choices may be modulated by individuals’ culture. We develop an agent-based model to study how behavioural decarbonisation interacts with longer-term cultural change, composed of individuals with multiple behaviours that evolve due to imperfect social learning in a small-world social network. Using the definition of culture as socially transmitted information, we represent individuals' environmental identity as an aggregation of attitudes towards multiple relevant behaviours. The strength of interaction between individuals is determined by the similarity in their environmental identity, leading to inter-behavioural dependency and spillovers in green attitudes. Our results show that the initial distribution of agent attitudes towards behaviours and asymmetries in social learning, such as confirmation bias, are the main drivers of model dynamics and the extent of behavioural decarbonisation, helping to generate awareness of what roadblocks may appear to effective climate policy.

The seminar can also be attended connecting to ZOOM: https://unive.zoom.us/j/83316158636
ID riunione: 833 1615 8636