Health behavior spreading with similar diminishing returns effect

•We model the spreading of health behavior in real-world online social network.•The model captures the similar diminishing returns effect of health behavior spreading.•The model’s contagion threshold is merely decided by the spreading rate and the logout probability.•The augmentation of the similar diminishing returns factor can increase the spreading speed and coverage.

Nowadays the propagation of human activity, especially health behavior, has become a significant issue in the study of online social network. Considering the effect of human behavior on information diffusion in social networks (Centola, 2010), we propose a simple “susceptible–adopted–susceptible” model with several interpretable parameters. This model shows a similar diminishing returns effect, in which the adoption probability of a susceptible individual grows less quickly as the number of his or her adopted neighbors increases. Surprisingly, the model’s contagion threshold is merely decided by the spreading rate and logout probability, not affected by the similar diminishing returns effect in real cases. Moreover, we find that the augmentation of the similar diminishing returns factor can increase the spreading speed and coverage. Our model captures properties of the real spreading of health behavior in real online networks and can provide instructions for fast propagation of new health behavior.