Rumours lead to self-organized migration routes

Abstract

Migrants attempting to reach a safe destination often have to make navigation decisions based on very limited information that is to a large degree sourced from other migrants that have made the journey before. Communication between migrants could therefore be a key factor in determining the dynamics of migration. We study the effect of information transfer on the variability and optimality of migration routes using an agent-based model with explicit representation of geography, resources and the agents’ knowledge thereof. We find that unless agents very quickly acquire objective information from the environment, a higher degree of social information exchange leads to less predictable and less optimal migration routes. This indicates that if a high proportion of information is socially received, routes are the result of self-organization rather than optimization. We suggest that similar effects should occur in all situations where individuals have to make complex decisions under limited information but in a social context.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Martin Hinsch: orcid.org/0000-0002-7059-7266

ORCID for Jakub Bijak: orcid.org/0000-0002-2563-5040

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