Diffusion of Innovation in a Social Environment: a Multi Agent Based Model

The spreading of certain innovations can’t be modelled just by taking into accounts pure technical issues; sometimes the forecasts made with a statistical or process based model, which considers just the engineering or financial aspects (i.e.: production process, activity decomposition, scale economies, product life cycle and so on), prove to be inaccurate or even wrong. This is commonly the case of cellular telephones, air-cooling systems, personal computers and so on, fields in which some external influences have led to diffusion results which are very different from the initial previsions obtained with classical prevision tools. The purpose of this work is to examine the diffusion of an emerging technical innovation: the district heating. The spreading of this technology shouldn’t be affected by phenomena like fashion – as happened with cellular phones - and its adoption can’t be considered a status symbol. Although, there are some other influences which can’t be taken into account by a traditional process based or statistical simulator, i.e.: the effects of individual perception about savings, ecological impacts and so on.