Dynamics of public opinion under the influence of epidemic spreading

Junhui Wu, Shunjiang Ni and Shifei Shen
Additional contact information
Junhui Wu: Institute of Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China2Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, P. R. China
Shunjiang Ni: Institute of Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China3Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China
Shifei Shen: Institute of Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China3Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2016, vol. 27, issue 07, 1-9

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel model with dynamically adjusted confidence level of others to investigate the propagation of public opinion on whether to buy chicken in the case of avian influenza infection in humans. We study how people adjust their confidence level in other people’s opinions according to their perceived infection risk and how the opinion evolution and epidemic spreading affect each other on different complex networks by taking into account the spreading feature of avian influenza, that is, only people who buy chicken are possible to be infected. The simulation results show that in a closed system, people who support buying chicken and people who are infected can achieve a dynamic balance after a few time-steps, and the final stable state is mainly dependent on the level of people’s risk perception, rather than the initial distribution of the different opinions. Our results imply that in the course of the epidemic spread, transparent and timely announcement of the number of infections and the risk of infection can help people take the right self-protection actions, and thus help control the spread of avian influenza.

Keywords: Opinion dynamics; epidemic spreading; risk perception; confidence level (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129183116500790
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:ijmpcx:v:27:y:2016:i:07:n:s0129183116500790

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0129183116500790

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC) is currently edited by H. J. Herrmann

More articles in International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().