The “Descriptive Norm and Fraud Dynamics” model demonstrates how fraudulent behavior can either proliferate or be contained within non-hierarchical organizations, such as peer networks, through social influence taking the form of a descriptive norm. This model expands on the fraud triangle theory, which posits that an individual must concurrently possess a financial motive, perceive an opportunity, and hold a pro-fraud attitude to engage in fraudulent activities (red agent). In the absence of any of these elements, the individual will act honestly (green agent).

The model explores variations in a descriptive norm mechanism, ranging from local distorted knowledge to global perfect knowledge. In the case of local distorted knowledge, agents primarily rely on information from their first-degree colleagues. This knowledge is often distorted because agents are slow to update their empirical expectations, which are only partially revised after one-to-one interactions. On the other end of the spectrum, local perfect knowledge is achieved by incorporating a secondary source of information into the agents’ decision-making process. Here, accurate information provided by an observer is used to update empirical expectations.

The model shows that the same variation of the descriptive norm mechanism could lead to varying aggregate fraud levels across different fraud categories. Two empirically measured norm sensitivity distributions associated with different fraud categories can be selected into the model to see the different aggregate outcomes.

We present here MEGADAPT_SESMO model. A hybrid, dynamic, spatially explicit, integrated model to simulate the vulnerability of urban coupled socio-ecological systems – in our case, the vulnerability of Mexico City to socio-hydrological risk.

This model tests whether local housing supply elasticity governs crash severity inside a single metropolitan housing market. Saiz (2010) established that across US metros, regions constrained by geography and regulation experience deeper boom-bust cycles than flexible ones. That finding is routinely applied downward to neighborhoods and ZIP codes as though the mechanism scaled without qualification.

The empirical record for the Washington DC and Northern Virginia region says it does not. Across 84 ZIP codes, measured supply elasticity ranges from 0.35 to 4.95 with a median of 1.21. The worst single-year price decline between 2007 and 2012 averaged 9.6 percent in constrained ZIP codes and 9.0 percent in flexible ones, a gap that cannot be distinguished from noise. Wide variation in the proposed cause, no meaningful separation in the proposed effect.

The model embeds households, houses and a metro-wide credit condition in the real ZIP geography of the region using three GIS layers and an empirical price panel. Local elasticity governs construction, exactly as theory predicts. Prices are driven by a shared macro drift schedule and, under the credit-amplified mode, by a leverage cycle with a financial accelerator and a deviation penalty. The design question is whether those shared forces are sufficient to override local supply differences at the sub-metropolitan scale.

…

The my-side bias is a well-documented cognitive bias in the evaluation of arguments, in which reasoners in a discussion tend to overvalue arguments that confirm their prior beliefs, while undervaluing arguments that attack their prior beliefs. This agent-based model in Netlogo simulates a group discussion among myside-biased agents, within a Bayesian setting. This model is designed to investigate the effects of the myside bias on the ability of groups to reach a consensus or collectively track the correct answer to a given binary issue.

The NIER model is intended to add qualitative variables of building owner types and peer group scales to existing energy efficiency retrofit adoption models. The model was developed through a combined methodology with qualitative research, which included interviews with key stakeholders in Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The concepts that the NIER model adds to traditional economic feasibility studies of energy retrofit decision-making are differences in building owner types (reflecting strategies for managing buildings) and peer group scale (neighborhoods of various sizes and large-scale Districts). Insights from the NIER model include: large peer group comparisons can quickly raise the average energy efficiency values of Leader and Conformist building owner types, but leave Stigma-avoider owner types as unmotivated to retrofit; policy interventions such as upgrading buildings to energy-related codes at the point of sale can motivate retrofits among the lowest efficient buildings, which are predominantly represented by the Stigma-avoider type of owner; small neighborhood peer groups can successfully amplify normal retrofit incentives.

Migration or other long-distance movement into other regions is a common strategy of fishers and fishworkers living and working on the coast to adapt to environmental change. This model attempts to understand the general dynamics of fisher mobility for over larger spatial scales. The model can be used for investigating the complex interplay that exists between mobility and fish stock heterogeneity across regions, and the associated outcomes of mobility at the system level.

The model design informed by the example of small-scale fisheries in the Gulf of California, Mexico but implements theoretical and stylized facts and can as such be used for different archetypical cases. Our methodological approach for designing the model aims to account for the complex causation, emergence and interdependencies in small-scale fisheries to explain the phenomenon of sequential overexploitation, i.e., overexploiting one resource after another. The model is intended to be used as a virtual laboratory to investigate when and how different levels of mobile fishers affect exploitation patterns of fisheries resources.

The purpose of this model is to understand the role of trade networks and their interaction with different fish resources, for fish provision. The model is developed based on a multi-methods approach, combining agent-based modeling, network analysis and qualitative data based on a small-scale fisheries study case. The model can be used to investigate both how trade network structures are embedded in a social-ecological context and the trade processes that occur within them, to analyze how they lead to emergent outcomes related to the resilience of fish provision. The model processes are informed by qualitative data analysis, and the social network analysis of an empirical fish trade network. The network analysis can be used to investigate diverse network structures to perform model experiments, and their influence on model outcomes.

The main outcomes we study are 1) the overexploitation of fish resources and 2) the availability and variability of fish provision to satisfy different market demands, and 3) individual traders’ fish supply at the micro-level. The model has two types of trader agents, seller and dealer. The model reveals that the characteristics of the trade networks, linked to different trader types (that have different roles in those networks), can affect the resilience of fish provision.

This model is an agent-based simulation designed to explore how climate-induced environmental degradation can contribute to the emergence of social violence in coastal communities that depend heavily on ecosystem services for their livelihoods. The model represents a coupled social–ecological system in which environmental shocks—such as sea level rise and marine ecosystem decline—affect local economic conditions, food security, and community stability.

Agents in the model represent individuals whose livelihoods depend on coastal ecosystems. Environmental degradation reduces ecosystem productivity and increases economic hardship, which can lead to the formation of grievances among agents. The model incorporates behavioral thresholds that determine how individuals respond to hardship and perceived injustice. Under certain conditions—particularly when institutional capacity and law enforcement effectiveness are limited—these grievances may escalate into violent behavior.

The simulation allows users to explore how different climate scenarios, levels of ecosystem degradation, livelihood dependence, and institutional responses influence the probability of social instability and violence. By modeling the interactions between environmental stress, socio-economic vulnerability, and governance capacity, the model provides a computational framework for examining potential pathways linking climate change and conflict in coastal social–ecological systems.

…

This is a NetLogo 7.0.1 agent-based model of interdependent team productivity under O-ring production logic. The model asks when collective problem-solving capacity (CPS) improves team output and when its effect is constrained by trust, burnout, specialization diversity, weak-link quality, and team-formation rules. Agents are heterogeneous in skill, CPS, trust, burnout, effort, learning rate, openness, specialization, adaptability, and aspiration. Each tick forms temporary teams, computes individual contribution quality, combines contributions through a geometric O-ring production function with an explicit weakest-link term, records output and success, and updates agents through feedback, learning, trust change, burnout, recovery, and turnover. The paper follows the ODD protocol, reports exact implementation equations, and analyzes six BehaviorSpace experiments with 50 stochastic repetitions per condition. Scenario results show that CPS is beneficial but not sufficient: productivity is highest when CPS is combined with trust, low burnout, effective coordination, and a reliable weakest-link floor. Diversity yields only modest gains at low CPS but larger gains when CPS is high. Formation-mode results are especially informative because mixed CPS-skill formation maximizes total output, whereas random formation has the highest binary success rate, showing that output magnitude and threshold success can diverge. The study contributes a transparent computational mechanism linking collective intelligence with O-ring production and identifies boundary conditions under which high-CPS teams can still be limited by weak links and interdependence.