Effects of social network structures and behavioral responses on the spread of infectious diseases

Facing infectious diseases, the actions taken by individuals play an important role in the prevention and control of these diseases. Previous studies have shown that there is a counter-intuitive phenomenon in the spread of disease. A higher success rate of self-protection may not reduce the epidemic size. In this paper, the epidemic transmission process is studied using an evolutionary game model of complex networks. It is assumed that individuals choose their strategies by comparing their payoff with their neighbors' payoff in the process of disease transmission. We analyze the counter-intuitive phenomenon using four different imitation principles for updating strategies, and find that different imitation principles influence the scope and magnitude of the counter-intuitive phenomenon. In addition, we find that community structures also affect the counter-intuitive phenomenon. Specifically, the counter-intuitive phenomenon always exists in a network with community structures, but not necessarily in a network without community structures, where the existence of the counter-intuitive phenomenon is affected by imitation principles.