Abstract
This is a companion paper to an earlier work in which an agent-based model is proposed by Nakagawa et al. for exploring the emergent phenomena of social license to operate (SLO) of a mining company. In this paper, the structure of the original model is described, along with the enhanced ability for the two-way diffusion of information and opinion among agents. This is achieved through the addition of a global “dialogue” variable, which dictates the extent to which higher influence agents accept opinion from agents of lower influence. Initial findings suggest that the bidirectional diffusion of information has a large effect on the time that the modelling population takes to reach a Social License consensus, and the effect is especially pronounced for low dialogue values. In other words, the Social License of communities characterized by a low preference for dialogue (as opposed to “top-down” mandated communication) will be largely affected by small changes in the preference for dialogue. Findings also suggest that as a modelling community becomes more and more open to dialogue, the effect on the time to consensus becomes less and less pronounced until it becomes negligible at a fairly low dialogue level.
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The authors would like to thank Minera San Critobal, S. A. for funding and support.
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Bahr, K., Nakagawa, M. The effect of bidirectional opinion diffusion on social license to operate. Environ Dev Sustain 19, 1235–1245 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9792-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9792-9