IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0137842.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analysing the Unequal Effects of Positive and Negative Information on the Behaviour of Users of a Taiwanese On-Line Bulletin Board

Author

Listed:
  • Shu-li Cheng
  • Wen-hsien Lin
  • Frederick Kin Hing Phoa
  • Jing-shiang Hwang
  • Wei-chung Liu

Abstract

The impact of social influence causes people to adopt the behaviour of others when interacting with other individuals. The effects of social influence can be direct or indirect. Direct social influence is the result of an individual directly influencing the opinion of another, while indirect social influence is a process taking place when an individual’s opinion and behaviour is affected by the availability of information about others’ actions. Such indirect effect may exhibit a more significant impact in the on-line community because the internet records not only positive but also negative information, for example on-line written text comments. This study focuses on indirect social influence and examines the effect of preceding information on subsequent users’ opinions by fitting statistical models to data collected from an on-line bulletin board. Specifically, the different impacts of information on approval and disapproval comments on subsequent opinions were investigated. Although in an anonymous situation where social influence is assumed to be at minimum, our results demonstrate the tendency of on-line users to adopt both positive and negative information to conform to the neighbouring trend when expressing opinions. Moreover, our results suggest unequal effects of the local approval and disapproval comments in affecting the likelihood of expressing opinions. The impact of neighbouring disapproval densities was stronger than that of neighbouring approval densities on inducing subsequent disapproval relative to approval comments. However, our results suggest no effects of global social influence on subsequent opinion expression.

Suggested Citation

  • Shu-li Cheng & Wen-hsien Lin & Frederick Kin Hing Phoa & Jing-shiang Hwang & Wei-chung Liu, 2015. "Analysing the Unequal Effects of Positive and Negative Information on the Behaviour of Users of a Taiwanese On-Line Bulletin Board," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-14, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0137842
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137842
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137842
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137842&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0137842?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dunia López-Pintado & Duncan J. Watts, 2008. "Social Influence, Binary Decisions and Collective Dynamics," Rationality and Society, , vol. 20(4), pages 399-443, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Förster, Manuel & Grabisch, Michel & Rusinowska, Agnieszka, 2013. "Anonymous social influence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 621-635.
    2. Christoph Engel & Alon Klement & Karen Weinshall Margel, 2017. "Diffusion of Legal Innovations: The Case of Israeli Class Actions," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2017_11, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Jan 2018.
    3. Raphael Suire & Jérome Vicente, 2009. "Why do some places succeed when others decline? A social interaction model of cluster viability," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 381-404, May.
    4. Grabisch, Michel & Rusinowska, Agnieszka, 2013. "A model of influence based on aggregation functions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 316-330.
    5. Milena Tsvetkova & Michael W Macy, 2014. "The Social Contagion of Generosity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-9, February.
    6. H Peyton Young & Lucas Merrill Brown, 2016. "The Diffusion of a Social Innovation: Executive Stock Options from 1936," Economics Series Working Papers 777, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Matan J. Cohen & Mayer Brezis & Colin Block & Adele Diederich & David Chinitz, 2013. "Vaccination, Herd Behavior, and Herd Immunity," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 33(8), pages 1026-1038, November.
    8. Flores Díaz, Ramón Jesús & Koster, Maurice & Lindner, Ines & Molina, Elisenda, 2010. "Networks and collective action," DES - Working Papers. Statistics and Econometrics. WS ws104830, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Estadística.
    9. Sebastián Moreno & Danilo Bórquez-Paredes & Valentina Martínez, 2023. "Analysis of the Characteristics and Speed of Spread of the “FUNA” on Twitter," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-18, April.
    10. Sharad Goel & Ashton Anderson & Jake Hofman & Duncan J. Watts, 2016. "The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 180-196, January.
    11. Hare, Forrest & Goldstein, Jonathan, 2010. "The interdependent security problem in the defense industrial base: An agent-based model on a social network," International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 128-139.
    12. Hidalgo-Hidalgo, Marisa & Jiménez, Natalia & López-Pintado, Dunia, 2021. "Social influence and position effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 113-131.
    13. Yihang Zhao & Jing Xiong & De Hu, 2023. "Reputation, Network, and Performance: Exploring the Diffusion Mechanism of Local Governments’ Behavior during Inter-Governmental Environmental Cooperation," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-17, July.
    14. Declan Mungovan & Enda Howley & Jim Duggan, 2011. "The influence of random interactions and decision heuristics on norm evolution in social networks," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 152-178, May.
    15. López-Pintado, Dunia, 2012. "Influence networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 776-787.
    16. Kang, Jia-Ning & Wei, Yi-Ming & Liu, Lan-cui & Yu, Bi-Ying & Liao, Hua, 2021. "A social learning approach to carbon capture and storage demonstration project management: An empirical analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 299(C).
    17. Tom Dvir & Renana Peres & Ze'ev Rudnick, 2020. "Modelling the expected probability of correct assignment under uncertainty," Papers 2008.05878, arXiv.org.
    18. Afghari, Amir Pooyan & Faghih Imani, Ahmadreza & Papadimitriou, Eleonora & van Gelder, Pieter & Hezaveh, Amin Mohamadi, 2021. "Disentangling the effects of unobserved factors on seatbelt use choices in multi-occupant vehicles," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    19. Michaeli, Moti & Spiro, Daniel, 2015. "Norm conformity across societies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 51-65.
    20. H. Peyton Young, 2009. "Innovation Diffusion in Heterogeneous Populations: Contagion, Social Influence, and Social Learning," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1899-1924, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:plo:pone00:0137842. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.