Project Milestone 2 📃 - The Report on Opinions Dynamics Model for Climate Change Lobbying is now available to be downloaded.
📃 Report Description
The report on model development focuses on the dynamics of climate lobbying and human behavioral biases, which are crucial for influencing policies and public attitudes toward climate change. It highlights the evolution of climate lobbying from grassroots efforts to a complex arena involving various actors, such as environmental NGOs and corporate interests. The integration of lobbying dynamics into opinion dynamics models is emphasized as an underexplored area. The ALMONDO project aims to bridge this gap by developing a model that accounts for behavioral biases and strategic lobbying, providing insights into how public perception and policy decisions are shaped through lobbying strategies.
The report outlines three key tasks in the modeling effort: a literature review identifying relevant behavioral biases, the development of a mathematical model for opinion dynamics, and an analysis of the model’s properties. The behavioral biases involved include simplification, availability, and herding, which influence how agents process information. The model incorporates lobbyists as external agents who aim to sway public beliefs through strategic signaling while operating under budget constraints. Theoretical exercises explore scenarios involving one or two lobbyists and their strategic interactions, while numerical simulations assess the model’s dynamics in various contexts. Overall, the report provides an overview of how opinion dynamics evolve under the influence of behavioral biases and lobbying activities.