Testing model robustness - Variation of farmers' decision-making in an agricultural land-use model

Abstract

Two empirically grounded agent-based models of agricultural land-use change are presented and compared with respect to factors driving ground-water use. The models are identical in most aspects, but one model uses a utility-approach to represent farmers' decision-making, while the other uses satisficing. The model-comparison exercise helps to distinguish substantial from implementation-dependent conclusions drawn from the model(s), and confirms the importance of model robustness tests. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.