Network Structure Can Amplify Innovation Adoption and Polarization in Group-Structured Populations with Outgroup Aversion

Individuals’ decisions to adopt an innovation can be influenced by the frequency of other adopters as well as by the group membership of previous adopters or non-adopters in their social network. In addition, adoption or non-adoption of some innovations has been characterized as a means of signaling identification with a group. While identity signaling and outgroup aversion effects on adoption and polarization have been considered in a geo-spatial environment, this work extends an existing model of outgroup aversion to a network-based environment. The results show that adoption levels in a network environment were higher, and polarization lower compared to the non-network environment with all other factors fixed. As more factors were varied, the associated change to adoption and polarization were amplified in network environments. The two most significant factors influencing adoption variability were the degree of outgroup aversion and the level of frequency dependence. Finally, in network environments with outgroup aversion, adoption was found to be higher when modularity and eigenvector centrality were high. In today’s polarized social environment, understanding these effects is critical to the adoption of emerging innovations such as mitigating climate change, combating novel viruses, or decentralizing financial transactions. While innovators are often focused on solving technical challenges to advance adoption of an innovation, equal emphasis on understanding and solving social and potential outgroup effects will be needed to achieve a desired adoption level.