IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/net/wpaper/1215.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

To Belong or to Be Different? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment in China

Author

Listed:
  • Monic Sun

    (Department of Marketing, Stanford University)

  • Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang

    (Department of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

  • Feng Zhu

    (Department of Management and Organization, University of Southern California)

Abstract

We examined whether people conform to or diverge from the most popular choice among their friends by conducting a large-scale field experiment on a leading social-networking site in China. Our setting allowed us to minimize confounding effects such as pre-existing taste similarities between a subject and her friends, the need to create a social identity, and the possibility of learning by observing friends’ choices. Surprisingly, we found that subjects were more likely to diverge from the popular choice among their friends as the popularity of that choice increased. The effect was more pronounced when they were reminded that their choices were visible to their friends. These results suggest that even members of a collectivist culture have a dominating need to be different.

Suggested Citation

  • Monic Sun & Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang & Feng Zhu, 2012. "To Belong or to Be Different? Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment in China," Working Papers 12-15, NET Institute, revised Oct 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:net:wpaper:1215
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.netinst.org/Sun_12-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Leider & Markus M. Möbius & Tanya Rosenblat & Quoc-Anh Do, 2010. "What Do We Expect from Our Friends?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(1), pages 120-138, March.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5qi1l9g8bm8p1as7q6imhg03ej is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Z. Néda & E. Ravasz & Y. Brechet & T. Vicsek & A.-L. Barabási, 2000. "The sound of many hands clapping," Nature, Nature, vol. 403(6772), pages 849-850, February.
    4. Andrew Whiten & Victoria Horner & Frans B. M. de Waal, 2005. "Conformity to cultural norms of tool use in chimpanzees," Nature, Nature, vol. 437(7059), pages 737-740, September.
    5. Horrace, William C. & Oaxaca, Ronald L., 2006. "Results on the bias and inconsistency of ordinary least squares for the linear probability model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 90(3), pages 321-327, March.
    6. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    7. repec:feb:artefa:0087 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Levitt, Steven D. & List, John A., 2009. "Field experiments in economics: The past, the present, and the future," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-18, January.
    9. Hongbin Cai & Yuyu Chen & Hanming Fang, 2009. "Observational Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 864-882, June.
    10. Joseph Henrich & Steven J. Heine & Ara Norenzayan, 2010. "Most people are not WEIRD," Nature, Nature, vol. 466(7302), pages 29-29, July.
    11. Ernst Fehr & Helen Bernhard & Bettina Rockenbach, 2008. "Egalitarianism in young children," Nature, Nature, vol. 454(7208), pages 1079-1083, August.
    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. Christian Catalini & Catherine Tucker, 2016. "Seeding the S-Curve? The Role of Early Adopters in Diffusion," NBER Working Papers 22596, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Tianshu Sun & Siva Viswanathan & Elena Zheleva, 2021. "Creating Social Contagion Through Firm-Mediated Message Design: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 808-827, February.
    2. Ruomeng Cui & Dennis J. Zhang & Achal Bassamboo, 2019. "Learning from Inventory Availability Information: Evidence from Field Experiments on Amazon," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1216-1235, March.
    3. Fishman, Arthur & Fishman, Ram & Gneezy, Uri, 2019. "A tale of two food stands: Observational learning in the field," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 101-108.
    4. John A. List, 2024. "Optimally generate policy-based evidence before scaling," Nature, Nature, vol. 626(7999), pages 491-499, February.
    5. Bouma, J.A. & Nguyen, Binh & van der Heijden, Eline & Dijk, J.J., 2018. "Analysing Group Contract Design Using a Lab and a Lab-in-the-Field Threshold Public Good Experiment," Discussion Paper 2018-049, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    6. Harry Pei, 2020. "Reputation Building under Observational Learning," Papers 2006.08068, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2020.
    7. Engström, Per & Forsell, Eskil, 2018. "Demand effects of consumers’ stated and revealed preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 43-61.
    8. Bonan, Jacopo & Battiston, Pietro & Bleck, Jaimie & LeMay-Boucher, Philippe & Pareglio, Stefano & Sarr, Bassirou & Tavoni, Massimo, 2021. "Social interaction and technology adoption: Experimental evidence from improved cookstoves in Mali," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    9. Anna K. Edenbrandt & Christian Gamborg & Bo Jellesmark Thorsen, 2020. "Observational learning in food choices: The effect of product familiarity and closeness of peers," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(3), pages 482-498, June.
    10. Mason, Malia F. & Dyer, Rebecca & Norton, Michael I., 2009. "Neural mechanisms of social influence," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 152-159, November.
    11. Jörg Peters & Jörg Langbein & Gareth Roberts, 2018. "Generalization in the Tropics – Development Policy, Randomized Controlled Trials, and External Validity," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 33(1), pages 34-64.
    12. Liangfei Qiu & Arunima Chhikara & Asoo Vakharia, 2021. "Multidimensional Observational Learning in Social Networks: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 32(3), pages 876-894, September.
    13. Antonia Grohmann & Sahra Sakha, 2015. "The Effect of Peer Observation on Consumption Choices: Experimental Evidence," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1525, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Ming Hu & Joseph Milner & Jiahua Wu, 2016. "Liking and Following and the Newsvendor: Operations and Marketing Policies Under Social Influence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(3), pages 867-879, March.
    15. Astier, Nicolas, 2018. "Comparative feedbacks under incomplete information," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 90-108.
    16. Zaggl, Michael A. & Block, Joern, 2019. "Do small funding amounts lead to reverse herding? A field experiment in reward-based crowdfunding," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 12(C).
    17. Catherine Tucker & Juanjuan Zhang, 2011. "How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(5), pages 828-842, May.
    18. Markus Mobius & Tuan Phan & Adam Szeidl, 2015. "Treasure Hunt: Social Learning in the Field," NBER Working Papers 21014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Jurui Zhang & Yong Liu & Yubo Chen, 2015. "Social Learning in Networks of Friends versus Strangers," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 573-589, July.
    20. Nicolas Astier, 2016. "Comparative Feedbacks under Incomplete Information," Working Papers hal-01465189, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    uniqueness-seeking; conformity; collectivist culture; field experiment; social network;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General

    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:net:wpaper:1215. 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: Nicholas Economides (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.NETinst.org/ .

    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.