Weatherization Adoption in A Multilayer Social Network: An Agent-based Approach

Energy conservation in residential buildings has been a topic of interest in recent years because of their high levels of energy consumption. Weatherization is set of approaches that can be used to make buildings more energy-efficient, thereby helping residents lower their energy bills and improving environmental sustainability. However, there are two significant challenges associated with weatherization adoption: high upfront investment costs with a long payback period, and minimal awareness of weatherization and its benefits. This paper proposes an agent-based model that will allow researchers to explore residents' socially-motivated energy conservation decisions by providing a realistic social context via a multilayer social network and incorporating opinion dynamics based on the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered epidemic model. Several experimental scenarios are run to demonstrate the model's potential to help policymakers determine how to encourage residential weatherization adoption.