Modeling and Simulating Online Panic in an Epidemic Complexity System: An Agent-Based Approach

Table 3

Agent-related variables used in the model.

Class	Variable	Type	Remark	First equation
Epidemic		XV	The number of close contacts of each person per time step, set to 20	(1)
		XV	The probability of infection by contact with an exposed person, set to 0.02	(1)
		XV	The probability of infection by contact with an infected person, set to 0.06	(1)
		XV	The probability of an exposed person turning into a susceptible person, set to 0.13	(2)
		XV	The probability of recovery of an exposed or infected person, set to 0.2	(2)
Agent		NV	Health statues, Xi(t) {S, E, I, R}	—
		NV	Intensity of the online panic	(5)
Media		XV	The influence weight on all neighbor agents at time t	(6)
		NV	The intensity of social media at time t	(8)
		XV	The probability of individual i being influenced by the news	(9)

NV: endogenous variable; XV: exogenous variable. The values of NVs are updated at each time step, t, while those of the XVs remain constant after initialization. Exogenous variables that the regulator can affect directly or indirectly.