Propagation characteristics of exposure effect on double-layer weighted social networks

Abstract The information propagation on complex networks has attracted much attention in recent years. We found that there is an exposure effect in social propagation which is often used to describe the psychological phenomenon. The user adoption behaviour in social propagation is also consistent with the exposure effect. According to the exposure effect, people are more likely to accept an object when it is exposed for a longer period. Therefore, we propose the exposure initial threshold, exposure final threshold, and the gate-like adoption probability function to better explain the exposure effect. Then, we construct a social propagation model based on exposure effect utilizing the exposure time and gate-like adoption probability function on a double-layer weighted network. To further understand the mechanism of social propagation, we also provide an edge-based compartmental theory based on the exposure effect. Experiments demonstrate that the exposure initial threshold and exposure duration can affect the propagation range to a certain extent. Next, given the propagation probability and exposure duration, there exists an optimal exposure initial threshold that maximizes the propagation range, which we call the optimal exposure ability. In addition, we explore the effect of the degree heterogeneity of nodes on social propagation under the exposure effect. The numerical simulations support the theoretical hypotheses of this work quite well.