Accelerating Consensus Reaching Through Top Persuaders: A Social Persuasion Model in Social Network Group Decision Making

Bin Pan, Jingti Han, Bo Tian, Yunhan Liu and Shenbao Liang ()
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Bin Pan: School of Information Management and Engineering, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Jingti Han: School of Information Management and Engineering, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Bo Tian: School of Information Management and Engineering, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Yunhan Liu: Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, Shanghai 200051, China
Shenbao Liang: School of Law, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China

Mathematics, 2025, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-26

Abstract: In traditional group decision-making models, it is commonly assumed that all decision makers exert equal influence on one another. However, in real-world social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, certain individuals—known as top persuaders—hold a disproportionately large influence over others. This study formulates the consensus-reaching problem in social network group decision making by introducing a novel framework for predicting top persuaders. Building on social network theories, we develop a social persuasion model that integrates social influence and social status to quantify individuals’ persuasive power more comprehensively. Subsequently, we propose a new CRP that leverages the influence of top persuaders. Our simulations and comparative analyses demonstrate that: (1) increasing the number of top persuaders substantially reduces the iterations required to achieve consensus; (2) establishing trust relationships between top persuaders and other individuals accelerates the consensus process; and (3) top persuaders retain a high and stable level of influence throughout the entire CRP rounds. Our research provides practical insights into identifying and strategically guiding top persuaders to enhance the efficiency in consensus reaching and reduce social management costs within social networked environments.

Keywords: group decision making; trust propagation; trust relationships; opinion dynamics; group consensus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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