Practical consensus in bounded confidence opinion dynamics (Q2665173)

This paper studies practical consensus in bounded confidence opinion dynamics. A discrete-time asymmetric heterogeneous Hegselmann-Krause model is considered. Each agent in the network has a maximum number of neighbors. The threshold of each agent can be changed such that the agent would connect with at least one neighbor with a lower or upper opinion. The practical consensus lies in the fact that each agent has a small similarity interval which they can tolerate in the sense that any neighbor having the opinion close to it will stop interacting. Sufficient conditions are derived for the system to converge within the similarity interval in finite time. The effect of any stubborn agent in the network is also studied. Numerical simulations are offered to illustrate the theoretical results.