Modeling and Analysis of the Interaction between Opinions and Actions among Heterogeneous Agents

In complex networks where agents exchange opinions and influence each other’s decisions, their interactions and decisions are shaped by many personal and social factors, such as bounded rationality and agent heterogeneity. In addition, the discrepancy between opinions and actions, known as the value-action gap, significantly impacts agents’ decisions. To better model and analyze the dynamics among heterogeneous agents’ opinions and behaviors, in this paper, we propose an opinion-action coevolution model that captures the intertwined interplay between individual opinions and decision-making process. Our model accounts for agents’ bounded rationality by considering both limited cognitive ability and non-cognitive subjective interference. We incorporate a cost function based on behaviour reasoning theory to model the value-action gap. We theoretically analyze the steady states of opinion-action co-evolution for all agent types and use simulations to validate our theoretical analysis and gain further insights.