The effect of bidirectional opinion diffusion on social license to operate

Authored by Kyle Bahr, Masami Nakagawa

Date Published: 2017

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-016-9792-9

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: NetLogo

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

This is a companion paper to an earlier work in which an agent-based model is proposed by Nakagawa et al. for exploring the emergent phenomena of social license to operate (SLO) of a mining company. In this paper, the structure of the original model is described, along with the enhanced ability for the two-way diffusion of information and opinion among agents. This is achieved through the addition of a global ``dialogue{''} variable, which dictates the extent to which higher influence agents accept opinion from agents of lower influence. Initial findings suggest that the bidirectional diffusion of information has a large effect on the time that the modelling population takes to reach a Social License consensus, and the effect is especially pronounced for low dialogue values. In other words, the Social License of communities characterized by a low preference for dialogue (as opposed to ``top-down{''} mandated communication) will be largely affected by small changes in the preference for dialogue. Findings also suggest that as a modelling community becomes more and more open to dialogue, the effect on the time to consensus becomes less and less pronounced until it becomes negligible at a fairly low dialogue level.

Tags

Agent-based modelling Violence Consensus Information diffusion systems dialogue Framework Social license to operate Informed-consent Mining-industry