A stochastic two-stage innovation diffusion model on a lattice

Abstract: We propose a stochastic model describing a process of awareness, evaluation and decision-making by agents on the d-dimensional integer lattice. Each agent may be in any of the three states belonging to the set {0, 1, 2}. In this model 0 stands for ignorants, 1 for aware and 2 for adopters. Aware and adopters inform its nearest ignorant neighbors about a new product innovation at rate lambda. At rate alpha an agent in aware state becomes an adopter due to the influence of adopters neighbors. Finally, aware and adopters forget the information about the new product, thus becoming ignorant, at rate one. Our purpose is to analyze the influence of the parameters on the qualitative behavior of the process. We obtain sufficient conditions under which the innovation diffusion (and adoption) either becomes extinct or propagates through the population with positive probability.