Issue: 2025/Vol.35/No.1, Pages

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT, BUT DOES IT MATTER? THE ROLE OF HETEROGENEITY IN EMPIRICALLY GROUNDED AGENT-BASED MODELS OF ALTERNATIVE FUEL VEHICLES DIFFUSION

Arkadiusz Jędrzejewski , Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska , Jakub Pawłowski , Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron 

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This is not yet the definitive version of the paper. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article.

Cite as: A. Jędrzejewski, A. Kowalska-Pyzalska, J. Pawłowski, K. Sznajd-Weron. Everyone is different, but does it matter? The role of heterogeneity in empirically grounded agent-based models of alternative fuel vehicles diffusion. Operations Research and Decisions 2025: 35(1). DOI 10.37190/ord250103

Abstract
There is a large literature on agent-based models (ABMs) to study the diffusion of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). Potentially, ABMs could be used to design policies that effectively promote AFVs. Unfortunately, ABMs have several drawbacks related to their complexity - models that are too simple are unrealistic, and models that are too complicated are difficult to describe, verify, and validate. Here we investigate what level of complexity is needed. We focus on the issue of heterogeneity because it is one of the biggest advantages of ABMs, but also one of the main sources of complexity. We begin with a brief review of ABMs for AFV diffusion. We then generalize an empirically grounded ABM of AFVs to analyze the role of different types of heterogeneity related to individual characteristics and social network structure. We show that most of these heterogeneities do not affect the outcome of the model. To facilitate replication of our results, we describe the model and its calibration to empirical data in detail. We also provide a link to a public GitHub repository where the code files, empirical data, and scripts uploaded to analyze the results.

Keywords: agent-based model, alternative fuel vehicles, battery electric vehicles, plug-in electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, simulation, diffusion, consumers

Received: 11 October 2024    Accepted: 16 November 2024
Published online: 8 February 2025