Agent-based modeling and simulation of community collective efficacy

Community collective efficacy is an important concept in studying various community problems and in developing community well-beings. While existing research on collective efficacy mainly focuses on building analytical or statistical models from informant survey data, this paper develops a complexity science-informed agent-based model to study the dynamic process of collective efficacy formation in a community. We model the individual level cognitive process for participating in community tasks and simulate the emergent spatial patterns of agents’ collective efficacies in a community. The developed model is based on the self-efficacy theory and Theory of Planned Behavior. Interesting patterns such as spatial segregation has been observed through simulations, and an application of the developed model is presented.