ACHRA: A novel model to study the propagation of clean heating acceptance among rural residents based on social networks

Abstract

Encouraging rural residents to adopt clean heating is an inevitable demand necessitated by the consolidation and improvement of air pollution control effects. In present-day China, clean heating is mainly promoted by the government via fiscal subsidies, but rarely embraced by rural residents on their own initiatives. As clean heating information propagated by social networks greatly affects the acceptance of clean heating among rural residents, social networks have great potential in promoting clean heating in Chinese rural areas. Relying on the relationships between rural residents in a typical village, a novel model called ACHRA is constructed propagating the acceptance of clean heating in this paper. Further, the propagation paths of clean heating information and the mutual influence between rural residents are simulated. The results indicate that the initial acceptance attitude of rural residents and the weight of influence between them affect the overall developmental trend of the acceptance of clean heating in social networks. For networks with low centralization, it is necessary to widely publicize the benefits of clean heating to fully utilize the group effects. For networks with medium centralization, core nodes in the social network should be particularly guided to maximize their influence on the propagation of clean heating acceptance. On this basis, it is suggested that publicity and guidance about clean heating should be brought into full play in Chinese rural areas. Inspiring village cadres and influential residents to pass on positive clean heating information to other residents should be paid special attention to.