IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v390y2011i11p2155-2159.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scaling of prosocial behavior in cities

Author

Listed:
  • Arbesman, Samuel
  • Christakis, Nicholas A.

Abstract

Previous research has examined how various behaviors scale in cities in relation to their population sizes. 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 scale 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Arbesman, Samuel & Christakis, Nicholas A., 2011. "Scaling of prosocial behavior in cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(11), pages 2155-2159.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:390:y:2011:i:11:p:2155-2159
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2011.02.013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037843711100121X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2011.02.013?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gottlieb, 2006. "Urban Resurgence and the Consumer City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(8), pages 1275-1299, July.
    2. Geoffrey B. West & James H. Brown & Brian J. Enquist, 1997. "A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology," Working Papers 97-03-019, Santa Fe Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andres Gomez-Lievano & Oscar Patterson-Lomba, 2018. "Estimating the drivers of urban economic complexity and their connection to economic performance," Papers 1812.02842, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    2. Li, Zekun & Chen, Zhenhua, 2023. "Predicting the future development scale of high-speed rail through the urban scaling law," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    3. Hu, Zhibin & Wu, Guangdong & Han, Yilong & Niu, Yanliang, 2023. "Unraveling the dynamic changes of high-speed rail network with urban development: Evidence from China," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Li, Meng-Hao & Haynes, Kingsley & Kulkarni, Rajendra & Siddique, Abu Bakkar, 2022. "Determinants of voluntary compliance: COVID-19 mitigation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    5. Michail Fragkias & José Lobo & Deborah Strumsky & Karen C Seto, 2013. "Does Size Matter? Scaling of CO2 Emissions and U.S. Urban Areas," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-8, June.
    6. Alexander Jones Gross & Dhiraj Murthy & Lav R. Varshney, 2017. "Pace of Life in Cities and the Emergence of Town Tweeters," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(4), pages 21582440177, December.
    7. J. Lobo & D. Strumsky & J. Rothwell, 2013. "Scaling of patenting with urban population size: evidence from global metropolitan areas," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(3), pages 819-828, September.
    8. Diego Rybski & Dominik E Reusser & Anna-Lena Winz & Christina Fichtner & Till Sterzel & Jürgen P Kropp, 2017. "Cities as nuclei of sustainability?," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 44(3), pages 425-440, May.
    9. Yves Bettignies & Joao Meirelles & Gabriela Fernandez & Franziska Meinherz & Paul Hoekman & Philippe Bouillard & Aristide Athanassiadis, 2019. "The Scale-Dependent Behaviour of Cities: A Cross-Cities Multiscale Driver Analysis of Urban Energy Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-20, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xu Yang & Xuan Zou & Xueqi Liu & Qixuan Li & Siqian Zou & Ming Li, 2023. "The Spatiotemporal Pattern and Driving Mechanism of Urban Sprawl in China’s Counties," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-16, March.
    2. Elliott, Robert J.R. & Sun, Puyang & Xu, Qiqin, 2015. "Energy distribution and economic growth: An empirical test for China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 24-31.
    3. Hilber, Christian A.L., 2010. "New housing supply and the dilution of social capital," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 419-437, May.
    4. Cheung, Chau-kiu & Ng, Sik Hung, 2012. "Impacts of financial crisis on social engagement in Hong Kong," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 623-632.
    5. Chen, Yanguang, 2014. "An allometric scaling relation based on logistic growth of cities," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 65-77.
    6. Suzanne Kok, 2014. "Matching worker skills to job tasks in the Netherlands: sorting into cities for better careers," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-36, December.
    7. Ingrid Gould Ellen & Katherine O'Regan, 2009. "Crime and U.S. Cities: Recent Patterns and Implications," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 626(1), pages 22-38, November.
    8. Zackary B. Hawley & Geoffrey K. Turnbull, 2019. "Social Interaction and Urban Location Decisions," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 1-26, July.
    9. Giannetti, Biagio F. & Marcilio, Maria De Fatima D.F.B. & Coscieme, Luca & Agostinho, Feni & Liu, Gengyuan & Almeida, Cecilia M.V.B., 2019. "Howard Odum’s “Self-organization, transformity and information”: Three decades of empirical evidence," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 407(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Antoine Grandclement & Guilhem Boulay, 2021. "From The Uneven De-Diversification Of Local Financial Resources To Planning Policies: The Residentialization Hypothesis," Post-Print halshs-03322259, HAL.
    11. Kristoffer Moeller, 2018. "Culturally clustered or in the cloud? How amenities drive firm location decision in Berlin," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 728-758, September.
    12. Wang, Cheng-Jun & Wu, Lingfei, 2016. "The scaling of attention networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 448(C), pages 196-204.
    13. He, Ji-Huan & Liu, Jun-Fang, 2009. "Allometric scaling laws in biology and physics," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 1836-1838.
    14. Christos Makriyannis, 2023. "How the Biophysical Paradigm Impedes the Scientific Advancement of Ecological Economics: A Transdisciplinary Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(23), pages 1-24, November.
    15. Hennessy, David A., 2006. "Feeding and the Equilibrium Feeder Animal Price-Weight Schedule," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 31(2), pages 1-23, August.
    16. Sidonia von Proff & Matthias Duschl & Thomas Brenner, 2017. "Motives behind the mobility of university graduates – A study of three German universities," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 37(1), pages 39-58, February.
    17. Katherine King, 2013. "Jane Jacobs and ‘The Need for Aged Buildings’: Neighbourhood Historical Development Pace and Community Social Relations," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(12), pages 2407-2424, September.
    18. Carl-Johan Dalgaard & Holger Strulik, 2015. "The physiological foundations of the wealth of nations," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 37-73, March.
    19. Fredrik Carlsen & Stefan Leknes, 2022. "For whom are cities good places to live?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(12), pages 2177-2190, December.
    20. Ye Seul Choi & Up Lim, 2015. "Effects of Regional Creative Milieu on Interregional Migration of the Highly Educated in Korea: Evidence from Hierarchical Cross-Classified Linear Modeling," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(12), pages 1-18, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:390:y:2011:i:11:p:2155-2159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.