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. 2011 Jun 1;390(11):2155-2159.
doi: 10.1016/j.physa.2011.02.013. Epub 2011 Feb 15.

Scaling of Prosocial Behavior in Cities

Samuel Arbesman  1 , Nicholas A Christakis
Affiliations

Scaling of Prosocial Behavior in Cities

Samuel Arbesman et al. Physica A. .

Abstract

Previous research has examined how various behaviors scale in cities in relation to their population size. Behavior related to innovation and productivity has been found to increase per capita as the size of the city increases, a phenomenon known as superlinear scaling. Criminal behavior has also been found to scaling superlinearly. Here we examine a variety of prosocial behaviors (e.g., voting and organ donation), which also would be presumed to be categorized into a single class of scaling with population. We find that, unlike productivity and innovation, prosocial behaviors do not scale in a unified manner. We argue how this might be due to the nature of interactions that are distinct for different prosocial behaviors.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scaling of prosocial behaviors against metropolitan population or households. A. Census mail responses. B. Living organ donations. C. Voting. D. Deceased organ donations. E. Number of political contributions. F. Amount of political contributions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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