Social contagions on multiplex networks with heterogeneous population

Abstract

In this paper, we study the effects of heterogeneous population on the dynamics of social contagions on multiplex networks. We assume a fraction of f nodes with a higher adoption threshold T>1, and the remaining fraction of 1−f nodes with adoption threshold 1. A social contagion model is proposed to describe the social contagions, in which a susceptible node adopting the contagion only when its received accumulated information is larger than the adoption threshold in either subnetwork. With an edge-based compartmental approach and extensive numerical simulations, we find that the system exhibits a continuous phase transition for small values of f, while shows a hybrid phase transition for relatively large values of f and T. For homogeneous multiplex networks the hybrid phase transition occurs, while there is only a continuous phase transition for heterogeneous multiplex networks. Our theoretical predictions agree well with numerical simulations.