IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ets/wpaper/7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Personality on Social Network Sites: An Application of the Five Factor Model

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Wehrli

Abstract

In this paper we explore how individual personality characteristics influence online social networking behavior. We use data from an online survey with 1560 respondents from a major Swiss technical university and their corresponding online profiles and friendship networks on a popular Social Network Site (SNS). Apart from sociodemographic variables and questions about SNS usage, we collected survey data on personality traits with a short question inventory of the Five Factor Personality Model (BFI-15). We show how these psychological network antecedents influence participation, adoption time, nodal degree and ego-network growth over a period of 4 months on the networking platform. Statistical analysis with overdispersed degree distribution models identifies extraversion as a major driving force in the tie formation process. We find a counter-intuitive positive effect for neuroticism, a negative influence for conscientiousness and no effects for openness and agreeableness.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Wehrli, 2008. "Personality on Social Network Sites: An Application of the Five Factor Model," ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers 7, ETH Zurich, Chair of Sociology.
    • Handle: RePEc:ets:wpaper:7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.ethz.ch/ets/papers/wehrli_studivz_big5.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2008
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cameron, A Colin & Trivedi, Pravin K, 1986. "Econometric Models Based on Count Data: Comparisons and Applications of Some Estimators and Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(1), pages 29-53, January.
    2. Matthew O. Jackson & Brian W. Rogers, 2007. "Meeting Strangers and Friends of Friends: How Random Are Social Networks?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 890-915, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Howley, P.; Boyce, C.;, 2017. "Not for everyone: Personality, mental health, and the use of online social networks," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 17/01, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. Ayano Fujiwara, 2017. "Who Works at the Interface in Knowledge Spillover Across Organizational Boundaries?," The Review of Socionetwork Strategies, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 65-81, June.
    3. Barbara Caci & Maurizio Cardaci & Silvana Miceli, 2019. "Development and Maintenance of Self-Disclosure on Facebook: The Role of Personality Traits," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(2), pages 21582440198, June.
    4. Itani, Omar S. & El Haddad, Rania & Kalra, Ashish, 2020. "Exploring the role of extrovert-introvert customers’ personality prototype as a driver of customer engagement: Does relationship duration matter?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    5. Alexander Joseph Ibnu Wibowo, 2023. "How Do Personality Traits Influence the Behavioral Intentions of Gen-Z Tourists?," Tržište/Market, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, vol. 35(2), pages 145-163.

    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. Fabrice Gilles & Sabina Issehnane & Florent Sari, 2022. "Using short-term jobs as a way to find a regular job. What kind of role for local context?," TEPP Working Paper 2022-07, TEPP.
    2. Laila Touhami Morghem & Khawlah Ali Abdalla Spetan, 2020. "Determinants of International Migration: An Applied Study on Selected Arab Countries (1995-2017)," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(2), pages 6-19.
    3. Marco Battaglini & Eleonora Patacchini & Edoardo Rainone, 2019. "Endogenous Social Connections in Legislatures," NBER Working Papers 25988, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kapeliushnikov, Rostislav & Kuznetsov, Andrei & Demina, Natalia & Kuznetsova, Olga, 2013. "Threats to security of property rights in a transition economy: An empirical perspective," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 245-264.
    5. Vasco M. Carvalho & Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi, 2019. "Production Networks: A Primer," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 635-663, August.
    6. Bettina Becker & Martin Theuringer, 2000. "Macroeconomic Determinants of Contingent Protection: The Case of the European Union," IWP Discussion Paper Series 02/2000, Institute for Economic Policy, Cologne, Germany.
    7. T.R.L. Fry & R.D. Brooks & Br. Comley & J. Zhang, 1993. "Economic Motivations for Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variable Models," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 69(2), pages 193-205, June.
    8. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    9. Rui Baptista & Joana Mendonça, 2010. "Proximity to knowledge sources and the location of knowledge-based start-ups," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 45(1), pages 5-29, August.
    10. Robert J. Barro & Rachel M. McCleary, 2016. "Saints Marching In, 1590–2012," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(331), pages 385-415, July.
    11. Metiu, Norbert, 2021. "Anticipation effects of protectionist U.S. trade policies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    12. David Rezza Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi, 2019. "The Macroeconomic Impact of Microeconomic Shocks: Beyond Hulten's Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(4), pages 1155-1203, July.
    13. Eunae Yoo & Elliot Rabinovich & Bin Gu, 2020. "The Growth of Follower Networks on Social Media Platforms for Humanitarian Operations," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(12), pages 2696-2715, December.
    14. Bowker, James Michael & Starbuck, C. Meghan & English, Donald B.K. & Bergstrom, John C. & Rosenberger, Randall S. & McCollum, Daniel W., 2009. "Estimating the Net Economic Value of National Forest Recreation: An Application of the National Visitor Use Monitoring Database," Faculty Series 59603, University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    15. Lorenzo Ductor & Sanjeev Goyal & Anja Prummer, 2018. "Gender & Collaboration," Working Papers 856, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    16. Cilem Selin Hazir & Corinne Autant-Bernard, 2012. "Using Affiliation Networks to Study the Determinants of Multilateral Research Cooperation Some empirical evidence from EU Framework Programs in biotechnology," Working Papers 1212, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    17. Thomas Bolli & Martin Woerter, 2013. "Technological Diversification and Innovation Performance," KOF Working papers 13-336, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    18. Becker, Gary S. & Rubinstein, Yona, 2011. "Fear and the response to terrorism: an economic analysis," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121740, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Gary King, 1989. "A Seemingly Unrelated Poisson Regression Model," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 17(3), pages 235-255, February.
    20. Greene, William, 2007. "Functional Form and Heterogeneity in Models for Count Data," Foundations and Trends(R) in Econometrics, now publishers, vol. 1(2), pages 113-218, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    online social networks; personality; Big Five; degree distribution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ets:wpaper:7. 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: Heidi Bruderer (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.socio.ethz.ch/ .

    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.