Heterogeneity in diffusion of innovations modelling: A few fundamental types

Renato Guseo and Mariangela Guidolin

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2015, vol. 90, issue PB, 514-524

Abstract: Heterogeneity of agents in aggregate systems is an important issue in the study of innovation diffusion. In this paper, we propose a modelling approach to latent heterogeneity, based on a few fundamental types, which avoids cumbersome integrations with not easy to motivate a priori distributions. This approach gives rise to a discrete non-parametric Bayesian mixture model with a possibly multimodal distributional behaviour. The result is inspired by two alternative theories: the first is based on the Rosenblueth two-point distributions (TPD), and the second is related to Cellular Automata models. From a statistical point of view, the proposed reduction allows for the recognition of discrete heterogeneous sub-populations by assessing their significance within a realistic diffusion process. An illustrative application is discussed with reference to Compact Cassettes for pre-recorded music in Italy.

Keywords: Latent heterogeneity of agents; Multimodality; Diffusion of innovations; Two-point distributions; Non-parametric Bayesian mixture models; Connectivity strength; Moore and von Neumann neighborhoods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:90:y:2015:i:pb:p:514-524

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2014.02.023

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