Costly bilingualism model in a population with one zealot

Abstract

We consider a costly bilingualism model in which one can take two strategies in parallel. We investigate how a single zealot triggers the cascading behavior and how the compatibility of the two strategies affects when interacting patterns change. First, the role of the interaction range in the cascading is studied by increasing the range from local to global. We find that people sometimes do not favor taking the superior strategy even though its payoff is higher than that of the inferior one. This is found to be caused by the local interactions rather than the global ones. Applying this model to social networks, we find that the location of the zealot is also important for larger cascading in heterogeneous networks.