LAUSR

Abstract Building owners’ appropriate risk-mitigation decisions can minimize the social, economic, and socioeconomic consequences of earthquakes. Implementation of appropriate policies can increase the adoption of seismic retrofit measures through the modification of owners’ beliefs. Social interactions among owners can influence their response to the implemented policies. There is a need for appropriate tools that consider the social interactions among the owners and facilitate the evaluation of their response to seismic retrofit promotion policies. The agent-based simulation model in this manuscript addresses this need. The implementation of policies and interactions among agents can influence agent's attributes. In this model, a set of behavior functions determine the impact of adjustments in owners’ attributes on their intentions and decisions. The relative agreement model used in the model characterizes the impact of agent interactions on their beliefs. The model outputs illustrate the gradual changes in the behavior of individual owners and their aggregate response to the implemented policy interventions. The capabilities of the proposed model are showcased by using an illustrative example. The example provides valuable insights on the diffusion of the impact of policies through society due to the agents’ interactions and shows that interactions among agents can enhance or nullify the impact of the implemented policies, based on the attitudes of the majority. Practitioners can use the proposed agent-based model to design new policies and select appropriate implementation mechanisms that effectively increase the adoption of risk-mitigation measures and enhance the resilience of communities.