A Multi-Scale Model of Cultural Distinctions in Technology Adoption

This chapter presents research on the benefits of multi-scale modeling to capture cultural and behavioral influences, using the adoption of new technology as a domain of demonstration. The spread of new technology depends on the decisions of individuals with diverse beliefs, traditions, and dispositions, which can be modeled using various approaches. The work here uses an agent-based model to represent factors at an individual level, and a system dynamics model to represent societal influences on technology acceptance. These models exchange information by having the society-level model generate outputs that are trends and which are used as inputs to the individual-level agent-based model, while the aggregation of individual behaviors supply reciprocal input to the higher-level society model. This type of federated modeling construct provides an analysis tool for examining the potential implications of economic and technology-related policies that may affect human behavior rising from one‟s cognition, social interactions, and culture. The approach is also extensible to modeling decision-making by individuals in other activities beyond technology acceptance.