Opinion dynamics of leaders and followers with multi-criteria influence functions for urban transport project application

Abstract This work proposes an opinion dynamics model describing public interactions on a given issue of public interest, with opinion leaders expressing changing support or opposition over time. Motivated by a system of ordinary differential equations from prior work, extensions were introduced accounting for the degree and direction of opinion leaders’ support, including the time-dependent parameters associated with their capacities to affect public opinion. Aside from these advances, the proposed model defines the degree of support of opinion leaders as a multi-criteria concept, a more realistic and comprehensive representation of their influence. The proposed dynamical system was applied in a case study modelling public opinion on a bus rapid transit (BRT) project. The model parameters linked to the interactions of sub-populations were adopted from a previous study. Meanwhile, archival data were extracted to proxy the influence capacities of opinion leaders and their degree of support under a specific criterion. Operations of intuitionistic fuzzy sets, more generalized sets that handle data ambiguity, were implemented to generate multi-criteria support (or opposition) degrees of opinion leaders over time. Findings suggest the following: (1) in the absence of opinion leaders, the public becomes indifferent about their opinion on the BRT project, (2) public opinion tends to be highly influenced by opinion leaders, and (3) intervention of opinion leaders results in a “polarizing effect”, where neutral sub-population dissipates in favor of the agree or disagree sub-population. These findings help determine the level of public support for a given project in the presence of opinion leaders.