Simulating Social Interaction in Times of COVID Restrictions

Vries, O.I. de (2022) Simulating Social Interaction in Times of COVID Restrictions. Master's Thesis / Essay, Artificial Intelligence.

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Abstract

This thesis presents an agent-based model developed to explore the interaction between the need for social contact and the support for visitor limitations (due to COVID measures). A social simulation was made in NetLogo, in which the agents' behaviour and decision making is mainly based on the HUMAT framework: a cognitive framework based on social scientific theory. Simulations of the model are used to study the change in efficacy and support for different policies. Results show that decreasing the allowed number of visitors leads to a lower total amount of contact, but also to a lower support base for the measure. Interestingly, for the strictest visitors measures, with the fewest allowed daily visitors, the support base is increasingly lower, while the intended effect on lowering the total amount of contact is relatively little. We conclude that there exists a trade-off between efficacy and support for the visitors measure. Stricter measures are initially effective in reducing numbers of contact, but the effect stagnates, while support does continue to decrease. A sweet spot may exist in which the policy is effective while maintaining general acceptance

Item Type:	Thesis (Master's Thesis / Essay)
Supervisor name:	Verbrugge, L.C. and Jager, W.
Degree programme:	Artificial Intelligence
Thesis type:	Master's Thesis / Essay
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	11 Apr 2022 12:37
Last Modified:	11 Apr 2022 12:37
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/26889

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