The Spread of Supply Chain’s Consumers’ Emotions as Function of Their Social Network Structure

Abstract

Modeling and simulation of complex sociotechnical systems such as supply chains and consumer markets include not only strictly the rational but the social components as well. Consumers are impacted by various parameters such as others’ opinions, rumors, overall mood of the community etc. Computer simulations are often used to observe how such phenomena form and change in time. The systems theory principles state that the system’s dynamics cannot be researched independently from the system’s structure, i.e., it is necessary to investigate the media over which the system operates. This leads to the inference that next to the observable behavior of the model, the structural composition must be considered. The paper investigates how different types of network structures impact the dynamics of contagion processes, in particular, the emotional state dynamics. The paper applies graph theory and network metrics to show that the structure parameters have an impact on the dynamics of the contagion.