Synthesis of Linked Population Involving Kinship and Influential Ties Using Mate-Search Heuristics

Abstract

Agent-based simulation has been successful in generative approaches on the emergence of various social phenomena. However, many case-specific studies used to put aside the potential of generating linked individuals. This paper proposes a convergent format of agent-based simulation and demographic microsimulation to grow up a linked population with two known properties of our society: Small-world networks and mate-search heuristics. Given that population is the core entity of a society, a demographic base is developed and individual-level rules from multidisciplinary findings are added to assign the capability of social networks. The results demonstrate how the social structure affects the speed and maximum degree of the targeted diffusion and indicates the correlation between individual-level attributes and aggregate indices in modern society. A comparative study is then conducted to reproduce an extreme case of an empirical reality. The study is expected to offer an illustration for population incorporating influential networks and multidisciplinary hypotheses.