Influence of initiators on the tipping point in the extended Watts model

Abstract

In this paper, we study how the influence of initiators (seeds) affects the tipping point of information cascades in networks. We consider an extended version of the Watts model, in which each node is either active (i.e., having adopted an innovation) or inactive. In this extended model, the adoption threshold, defined as the fraction of active neighbors required for an inactive node to become active, depends on whether the node is a seed neighbor (i.e., connected to one or more initiators) or an ordinary node (i.e., not connected to any initiators). Using the tree approximation on random graphs, we determine the tipping point, at which the fraction of active nodes in the final state increases discontinuously with an increasing seed fraction. The occurrence of a tipping point and the scale of cascades depend on two factors: whether a giant component of seed neighbors is formed when the seed fraction is large enough to trigger cascades among seed neighbors, and whether the giant component of ordinary nodes is maintained when newly activated nodes trigger further activations among ordinary nodes. The coexistence of two giant components suggests that a tipping point can appear twice. We present an example demonstrating the existence of two tipping points when there is a gap between the adoption thresholds of seed neighbors and ordinary nodes. Monte Carlo simulations clearly show that the first cascade, occurring at a small tipping point, occurs in the giant component of seed neighbors, while the second cascade, occurring at a larger tipping point, extends into the giant component of ordinary nodes.