“Exit, voice, and loyalty”: un modello interattivo-computazionale della terna hirschmaniana mediante la simulazione ad agenti

In recent years, agent-based modelling (ABM) has gradually been spreading in social sciences, as a tool capable to test hypotheses, improve sociological theories, and anchor macro analyses onto empirical data, consequently reinforcing the micro-macro links. This article illustrates a computational-interactive model based on the Hirschman’s framework, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. The triad has been reinterpreted in the light of the social actor theory of Luciano Gallino. In the model, built in NetLogo, social actors symbolically move through social systems. As in a “virtual laboratory” – by varying simple considered parameters – the simulation results show the potential of the method to enlighten some logics and dynamics connected to the theory.