Explaining Changes in Physical Activity Through a Computational Model of Social Contagion

Abstract

Social processes play a key role in health behaviour. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of such processes is important when designing health interventions with a social component. In this work, we apply a computational model of social contagion to a data set of 2,472 users of a physical activity promotion program. We compare this model’s predictions to the predictions of a simple linear model that has been derived by a regression analysis. The results show that the social contagion model performs better at describing the pattern seen in the empirical data than the linear model, indicating that some of the dynamics of the physical activity levels in the network can be explained by social contagion processes.

Research was sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory and was accomplished under Cooperative Agreement Numbers W911NF-09-2-0053 (the ARL Network Science CTA). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Army Research Laboratory or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation here on. This document does not contain technology or technical data controlled under either the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the U.S. Export Administration Regulations.