Herding tendency as an aggregating factor in a binary mixture of social entities

Dranreb Earl O. Juanico

Ecological Modelling, 2009, vol. 220, issue 24, 3521-3526

Abstract: The role of herding tendency in the group formation of social entities is hereby explored. The herding tendency is quantified by a parameter α∈[0,1]. The system consists of a mixture of two types of entities: (i) those with α>0 and (ii) those with α=0. The latter consist a fraction p of the entire population. The dynamics of agent interactions leads to the formation of clusters of different sizes. The size distribution D(s) of these clusters are found to obey a power-law only in the limit that α→1 and p→0. Group-size data of several real-world animal systems are fitted with curves generated by the model. This study contributes further to the understanding of group-forming behavior commonly cited in ecological studies.

Keywords: Group formation; Herding; Diversity; Self-organized criticality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:220:y:2009:i:24:p:3521-3526

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2009.06.030

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