Impact of homophily in adherence to anti-epidemic measures on the spread of infectious diseases in social networks

Piotr Bentkowski; Tomasz Gubiec

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arXiv · 2507.13848

Impact of homophily in adherence to anti-epidemic measures on the spread of infectious diseases in social networks

Piotr Bentkowski·Tomasz Gubiec

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Abstract

We investigate how homophily in adherence to anti-epidemic measures affects the final size of epidemics in social networks. Using a modified SIR model, we divide agents into two behavioral groups-compliant and non-compliant-and introduce transmission probabilities that depend asymmetrically on the behavior of both the infected and susceptible individuals. We simulate epidemic dynamics on two types of synthetic networks with tunable inter-group connection probability: stochastic block models (SBM) and networks with triadic closure (TC) that better capture local clustering. Our main result reveals a counterintuitive effect: under conditions where compliant infected agents significantly reduce transmission, increasing the separation between groups may lead to a higher fraction of infections in the compliant population. This paradoxical outcome emerges only in networks with clustering (TC), not in SBM, suggesting that local network structure plays a crucial role. These findings highlight that increasing group separation does not always confer protection, especially when behavioral traits amplify within-group transmission.

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Piotr Bentkowski, Tomasz Gubiec. 2025-07-18. Impact of homophily in adherence to anti-epidemic measures on the spread of infectious diseases in social networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13848

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