Modeling and Analysis the Evolution of Herding Behavior in Public Opinion Propagation

This paper is to study the evolution of herding behaviors in public opinion propagation and present an analysis of the general rules of herding behaviors using an evolution model of herding behavior in public opinion propagation. Through the behavior spreads among decision making individuals, this paper described the process of herding behavior in public opinion propagation from the perspective of social networks. According to the Bayesian rule, this paper analyzes the conditional probability of decision making individuals and builds a mathematical model of the evolution of herding behavior, then derives the occurrence condition of the evolution. Finally, this paper puts forward some control strategies according to the analysis of the process of herding behavior. It shows that the herding behavior is based on the information cascade, the decision making individual tends to ignore his private signals and to accept the decision of the majority when the difference between acceptable individuals number and refusal individuals number is more than two.