Behavioral experiments in computational social science

Vincent Buskens, Rense Corten and Wojtek Przepiorka
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Vincent Buskens: Utrecht University
Wojtek Przepiorka: Utrecht University

No 9vm5t, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Behavioral experiments are rarely used as an empirical strategy in computational social science, where empirical studies typically focus on analyzing large-scale digital trace data. We argue that behavioral experiments have a role in computational social science, in particular in combination with agent-based modeling – a key theoretical strategy in computational social science. We highlight three ways in which behavioral experiments can contribute to theory building in computational social science: by testing macro-level predictions from agent-based models, by evaluating behavioral assumptions on which these models are based, and by calibrating agent-based models. We illustrate these points through three examples from our work concerned with the emergence of conventions.

Date: 2024-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-hme
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:9vm5t

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/9vm5t

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