1. A graph cellular automaton with relation-based neighbourhood describing the impact of peer influence on the consumption of marijuana among college-aged youths
- Author
-
Muhammad Zaid Dauhoo, Laurent Dumas, Yusra Bibi Ruhomally, Université de Maurice, Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Versailles (LMV), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Paris-Saclay-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Mauritius, UoM, and We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Mr Maheshsingh Mungur from the University of Mauritius in the preparation of this work. This work has been conducted under the HEC (Higher Education Commission Mauritius) MPhil/PhD scholarship. The authors would also like to thank the reviewers for their constructive and valuable comments, which led to the improvement of the paper.
- Subjects
Statistics and Probability ,050402 sociology ,Relation (database) ,media_common.quotation_subject ,targeted campaigns of prevention ,[SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio] ,Population ,02 engineering and technology ,relation-based ,0504 sociology ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,Set (psychology) ,education ,Recreation ,Neighbourhood (mathematics) ,media_common ,Consumption (economics) ,education.field_of_study ,peer influence ,Applied Mathematics ,Addiction ,05 social sciences ,Marijuana ,Modeling and Simulation ,graph cellular automaton ,Graph (abstract data type) ,020201 artificial intelligence & image processing ,Psychology ,Social psychology - Abstract
International audience; A novel approach depicting the dynamics of marijuana usage to gauge the effects of peer influence in a school population, is the site of investigation. Consumption of drug is considered as a contagious social epidemic which is spread mainly by peer influences. A relation-based graph-CA (r-GCA) model consisting of 4 states namely, Nonusers (N), Experimental users (E), Recreational users (R) and Addicts (A), is formulated in order to represent the prevalence of the epidemic on a campus. The r-GCA model is set up by local transition rules which delineates the proliferation of marijuana use. Data available in [4] is opted to verify and validate the r-GCA. Simulations of the r-GCA system are presented and discussed. The numerical results agree quite accurately with the observed data. Using the model, the enactment of campaigns of prevention targeting N, E and R states respectively were conducted and analysed. The results indicate a significant decline in marijuana consumption on the campus when a campaign of prevention targeting the latter three states simultaneously, is enacted.
- Published
- 2021