Vaccination behavior by coupling the epidemic spreading with the human decision under the game theory

Xinyu Wang, Danyang Jia, Shupeng Gao, Chengyi Xia, Xuelong Li, Zhen Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

48 Scopus citations

Abstract

When confronting the epidemics or pandemics, there often exists an interplay between epidemic incidence and the vaccination strategies of individuals. Recently, the characteristics of human behaviors, such as imitating nature or bandwagon effect, have been proven critical to the final herd immunity. In this paper, by establishing a two-layered multiplex network model which combines SIR epidemic process, vaccination decision-making and imitating human nature, we discover that imitating behavior would restrain the increase of herd immunity, which is verified by Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field equations, respectively. Interestingly, a suitable quantity of conformity motivated individual, counter-intuitively, could be beneficial to save the social costs. At the same time, we analytically determine the precise conditions for the minimum total social costs. The current results can help to understand the behavior of social group in depth and then explore public attitudes concerning the vaccine, which usually has a tremendous impact on social vaccine take-up within the population.

Original languageEnglish
Article number125232
JournalApplied Mathematics and Computation
Volume380
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Sep 2020

Keywords

  • Conformity motivated behavior
  • Mean-field method
  • Monte Carlo simulation
  • Profit driven decision
  • Voluntary vaccination

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Vaccination behavior by coupling the epidemic spreading with the human decision under the game theory'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this