2008/06/19 by Paul Ormerod, Ormerod, Paul, Greg Wiltshire +1
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0806.3176
arxiv created 2008/06/19 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We analyse the recent rapid growth of 'binge' drinking in the UK. This means the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, especially by young people, leading to serious anti-social and criminal behaviour in urban centres. We show how a simple agent-based model, based on binary choice with externalities, combined with a small amount of survey data can explain the phenomenon. We show that the increase in binge drinking is a fashion-related phenomenon, with imitative behaviour spreading across socila networks The results show that a small world network, rather than a random or scale free, offers the best description of the key aspects of the data