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Least-Cost Influence Maximization on Social Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Dilek Günneç

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, Ozyegin University, Istanbul 34794, Turkey)

  • S. Raghavan

    (Robert H. Smith School of Business and Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742)

  • Rui Zhanga

    (Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309)

Abstract

Viral-marketing strategies are of significant interest in the online economy. Roughly, in these problems, one seeks to identify which individuals to strategically target in a social network so that a given proportion of the network is influenced at minimum cost. Earlier literature has focused primarily on problems where a fixed inducement is provided to those targeted. In contrast, resembling the practical viral-marketing setting, we consider this problem where one is allowed to “partially influence” (by the use of monetary inducements) those selected for targeting. We thus focus on the “least-cost influence problem (LCIP)”: an influence-maximization problem where the goal is to find the minimum total amount of inducements (individuals to target and associated tailored incentive) required to influence a given proportion of the population. Motivated by the desire to develop a better understanding of fundamental problems in social-network analytics, we seek to develop (exact) optimization approaches for the LCIP. Our paper makes several contributions, including (i) showing that the problem is NP-complete in general as well as under a wide variety of special conditions; (ii) providing an influence greedy algorithm to solve the problem polynomially on trees, where we require 100% adoption and all neighbors exert equal influence on a node; and (iii) a totally unimodular formulation for this tree case.

Suggested Citation

  • Dilek Günneç & S. Raghavan & Rui Zhanga, 2020. "Least-Cost Influence Maximization on Social Networks," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 32(2), pages 289-302, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orijoc:v:32:y:2020:i:2:p:289-302
    DOI: 10.1287/ijoc.2019.0886
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Cheng-Lung Chen & Eduardo L. Pasiliao & Vladimir Boginski, 2023. "A polyhedral approach to least cost influence maximization in social networks," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 1-31, January.
    2. Ariah Klages-Mundt & Andreea Minca, 2021. "Optimal Intervention in Economic Networks using Influence Maximization Methods," Papers 2102.01800, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2023.
    3. Klages-Mundt, Ariah & Minca, Andreea, 2022. "Optimal intervention in economic networks using influence maximization methods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 300(3), pages 1136-1148.

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