Changing minds about cars: Modeling the adoption of innovations in transportation

Changing Minds About Cars Modeling the Adoption of Innovations in Transportation Tobias Schrรถder (with Ingo Wolf, Jochen Neumann, Gerhard de Haan) University of Waterloo Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience Free University of Berlin Institut Futur

Sustainable Transportation: Electric Cars • German national strategy for sustainability • 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020 • “Showcase Regions”

• Strategic research funding • Technology development – maintain industry leadership • But also: societal transformation!

Resistance to Change • The conservative human mind.

• “People want to experience what they already know.” (Heise, 2007) • Cognitive Science: • Motivated cognition, emotional coherence (e.g., Kunda, 1990; Thagard, 2000; 2006)

• Social Science: • Identity maintenance, homophily (e.g., Heise, 2007; McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001)

Cognitive-affective Mapping (CAM) (e.g., Homer-Dixon, Milkoreit, Mock, Schrรถder, & Thagard, subm.)

Example: Introduce legal minimum wage in Germany?

Free software for drawing CAMs: http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/empathica.html

Modeling Motivated Cognition (Thagard, 2006 – the HOTCO model)

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Simulating parallel constraint satisfaction: update activation values (-1 … +1) of all nodes in parallel by summing up input from excitatory and inhibitory connections with other nodes.

Multiple cycles of updating yield stable pattern, which corresponds to agent’s decision. social democratic

conservative

enhance purchasing power

+.74

+.34

reduce costs for employers

+.34

+.74

introduce minimum wage

+.76

-.70

don’t introduce min. wage

-.70

+.76

Modeling Persuasion: Disliked Sender

Do arguments change minds?

activation enhance purchasing power

+.74

reduce costs for employers

+.36

introduce minimum wage

+.77

don’t introduce min. wage

-.66

Modeling Persuasion: Liked Sender

Sometimes, arguments do change minds (, if they come from the right person)! activation enhance purchasing power

+.64

reduce costs for employers

+.66

introduce minimum wage

-.71

don’t introduce min. wage

+.79

Interaction of Cognitive-Affective and Social Mechanisms

Project Design • Step 1: “classical” marketing research • What are people’s attitudes about electric cars?

• Focus groups and representative survey

• Step 2: agent-based model • How are people’s attitudes going to change in the future?

• Computer simulation

Step 1, (some) Results: A Typology of Transportation Consumers (Wolf, Neumann, Hoffmann, Schröder, & de Haan, in prep.)

Comfort-Orientierted Individualists • High income • Car drivers • Low ecological norm • Not interested in e-cars

Cost-Orientierted Pragmatics • Low income • Low education • Use public transport and bike • Not interested in e-cars

• Innovation-Orientiented Progressives Eco-orientierted Opinion Leaders • Car drivers • Mostly singles • High innovativeness in general • Interested in e-cars

• High education • Use bike frequently • High ecological norm • Very interested in e-cars

2+'3/4356$Three Dimensions of Emotion

(e.g., Ertel, 1964; Fontaine, Scherer, Roesch, & Ellsworth, 2007; Mehrabian, 1995; /.;$A":30(/-$)+-$2'"#)#$ Morgan & Heise, 1988; Osgood, 1962, 1969; Osgood, May, & Miron, 1975)

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Transportation Decisions and Emotions Comfort-Oriented Individualists

Innovation-Oriented Progressives

Cost-Oriented Pragmatics

Eco-Oriented Opinion Leaders

Step 2: Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) (e.g., Bonabeau, 2002; Gilbert, 2007; Helbing & Balietti, 2012; Kiesling et al., 2011)

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ABM: • Computer simulation of multilevel interactions in complex social systems • Agents follow simple rules, complexity through interaction in networks

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The Decision Model (individual agents) (based on Thagard’s 2006 HOTCO model)

The Communication Model (based on Thagard & Kroon, 2006)

A) Social network

B) Communication

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C) Decision Update

Demonstration: The Simulation Model (Wolf, Schrรถder, Neumann, & de Haan, in prep.)

Computational Experiments and Decision Support • “Play with” different strategies for policy measures •

E.g., purchase price subsidy, tax breaks, campaign

• Assumptions about effect of these measures on mental representations • Test effects of measures in computer simulation

Simulation Results: Adoption Dynamics

Diffusion Scenarios per Consumer Type

Summary • Sustainable development = technology + (collective) change of minds • Resistance to change in social systems results from interaction of cognitive and social mechanisms (emotional coherence + homophily) • Theory-based social simulation: a pathway to better understanding social systems, enabling better decision-making?

Thank you! l

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To collaborators, especially: l

Paul Thagard (theorizing and computational modeling)

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Ingo Wolf (managed the e-car project)

For funding: l

German Research Foundation

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German Federal Ministry of Education and Research

To all of you for your interest, questions & comments!