An Agent-Based Model of (Food) Consumption: Accounting for the Intention-Behaviour-Gap on Three Dimensions of Characteristics with Limited Knowledge

EasyChair Preprint no. 5440

Abstract

We propose an agent-based model to study purchase diffusion. We conceive goods with 3 dimensions of characteristics, price premiums and limited knowledge on the part of consumers. Despite purchase intention for each characteristic being high, only a reduced number of consumers are initially able to acquire them. The model thus reproduces the IntentionBehaviour-Gap often identified in sustainable food consumption, by exploring two of its known sources: price premiums on the presence of extra characteristics, and lacks in consumers’ knowledge as to which goods contain them. We analyse the extent to which knowledge of characteristics diffuses throughout the population and purchases of them are adopted. By testing how different parameters affect these evolutions, we offer insights as to how wider adoption of desirable purchase behaviours can be encouraged. Results show that all parameters have significant effects on knowledge availability and purchase behaviour, and that the ensuing increased knowledge particularly affects purchases of combined characteristics—an interesting and unexpected result. Modifying network parameters (average network degree and knowledge spillovers) produces effects comparable to those of external ones (initial knowledge availability and price premiums), an interesting feature in terms of policy recommendations since the former can arguably imply less costly interventions than the latter.

Keyphrases: agent-based modelling, innovation diffusion, Intention-Behaviour-Gap, Lancaster goods, social influence, sustainable consumption

@Booklet{EasyChair:5440,
  author = {Pedro López-Merino and Juliette Rouchier},
  title = {An Agent-Based Model of (Food) Consumption: Accounting for the Intention-Behaviour-Gap on Three Dimensions of Characteristics with Limited Knowledge},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 5440},

  year = {EasyChair, 2021}}