Social culture and innovation diffusion: a theoretically founded agent-based model

This study proposes an agent-based model to theoretically investigate the effects of social culture on innovation diffusion. The model assumes that social culture (i.e., individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance from Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory) has a direct effect on the small-world network structure and individual characteristics. We further explore how the characteristics of innovation influence the diffusion process. We find that individualism has a positive effect on the diffusion speed in the early stage, whereas uncertainty avoidance and power distance have negative effects on innovation diffusion. The effect of uncertainty avoidance on the diffusion speed turns positive after the early stage of diffusion and the negative effect of power distance becomes positive in the late stage. We compare real-world diffusion data with the proposed agent-based model, finding some similarities in the diffusion patterns. The characteristics of innovation affect innovation diffusion when the uncertainty avoidance is high. However, when both uncertainty avoidance and individualism are low, the effect of the characteristics of an innovation on diffusion is restricted.