IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v125y2015icp19-31.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Choosing your network: Social preferences in an online health community

Author

Listed:
  • Centola, Damon
  • van de Rijt, Arnout

Abstract

A growing number of online health communities offer individuals the opportunity to receive information, advice, and support from peers. Recent studies have demonstrated that these new online contacts can be important informational resources, and can even exert significant influence on individuals' behavior in various contexts. However little is known about how people select their health contacts in these virtual domains. This is because selection preferences in peer networks are notoriously difficult to detect. In existing networks, unobserved pressures on tie formation – such as common organizational memberships, introductions to friends of friends, or limitations on accessibility – may mistakenly be interpreted as individual preferences for interacting/not interacting with others. We address these issues by adopting a social media approach to studying network formation. We study social selection using an in vivo study within an online exercise program, in which anonymous participants have equal opportunities for initiating relationships with other program members. This design allows us to identify individuals' preferences for health contacts, and to evaluate what these preferences imply for members' access to new kinds of health information, and for the kinds of social influences to which they are exposed. The study was conducted within a goal-oriented fitness competition, in which participation was greatest among a small core of active individuals. Our results show that the active participants displayed indifference to the fitness and exercise profiles of others, disregarding information about others’ fitness levels, exercise preferences, and workout experiences, instead selecting partners almost entirely on the basis of similarities on gender, age, and BMI. Interestingly, the findings suggest that rather than expanding and diversifying their sources of health information, participants' choices limited the value of their online resources by selecting contacts based on characteristics that are common sources of homophily in offline relationships. In light of our findings, we discuss design principles that may be useful for organizations and policy makers trying to improve the value of participants' social capital within online health programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Centola, Damon & van de Rijt, Arnout, 2015. "Choosing your network: Social preferences in an online health community," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 19-31.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:125:y:2015:i:c:p:19-31
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.05.019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795361400313X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.05.019?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frederick Mosteller, 1951. "Remarks on the method of paired comparisons: I. The least squares solution assuming equal standard deviations and equal correlations," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 16(1), pages 3-9, March.
    2. Ali, Mir M. & Amialchuk, Aliaksandr & Rizzo, John A., 2012. "The influence of body weight on social network ties among adolescents," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 20-34.
    3. Sergio Currarini & Matthew O. Jackson & Paolo Pin, 2009. "An Economic Model of Friendship: Homophily, Minorities, and Segregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(4), pages 1003-1045, July.
    4. Frederick Mosteller, 1951. "Remarks on the method of paired comparisons: II. The effect of an aberrant standard deviation when equal standard deviations and equal correlations are assumed," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 16(2), pages 203-206, June.
    5. Barry Wellman, 2001. "Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 227-252, June.
    6. Gunter J. Hitsch & Ali Hortaçsu & Dan Ariely, 2010. "Matching and Sorting in Online Dating," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 130-163, March.
    7. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    8. Mercken, Liesbeth & Snijders, Tom A.B. & Steglich, Christian & de Vries, Hein, 2009. "Dynamics of adolescent friendship networks and smoking behavior: Social network analyses in six European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1506-1514, November.
    9. Cosma Rohilla Shalizi & Andrew C. Thomas, 2011. "Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 40(2), pages 211-239, May.
    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. Mehmet Ali Balcı & Larissa M. Batrancea & Ömer Akgüller & Anca Nichita, 2022. "Coarse Graining on Financial Correlation Networks," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-16, June.
    2. Shirazi, Farid & Wu, Yun & Hajli, Ali & Zadeh, Arash H. & Hajli, Nick & Lin, Xiaolin, 2021. "Value co-creation in online healthcare communities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    3. Pinar Yildirim & Yanhao Wei & Christophe Bulte & Joy Lu, 2020. "Social network design for inducing effort," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 381-417, December.
    4. Mark Tuson & Paul Harper & Daniel Gartner & Doris Behrens, 2023. "Understanding the Impact of Social Networks on the Spread of Obesity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(15), pages 1-22, July.
    5. Rueger, Jasmina & Dolfsma, Wilfred & Aalbers, Rick, 2021. "Perception of peer advice in online health communities: Access to lay expertise," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    6. Bilgicer, Tolga & Jedidi, Kamel & Lehmann, Donald R. & Neslin, Scott A., 2015. "Social Contagion and Customer Adoption of New Sales Channels," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 254-271.
    7. Joan Torrent-Sellens & Cristian Salazar-Concha & Pilar Ficapal-Cusí & Francesc Saigí-Rubió, 2021. "Using Digital Platforms to Promote Blood Donation: Motivational and Preliminary Evidence from Latin America and Spain," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-17, April.
    8. Gisela Redondo-Sama & Teresa Morlà-Folch & Ana Burgués & Jelen Amador & Sveva Magaraggia, 2021. "Create Solidarity Networks: Dialogs in Reddit to Overcome Depression and Suicidal Ideation among Males," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-15, November.

    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. Claire L. Adida & David D. Laitin & Marie-Anne Valfort, 2015. "Religious Homophily In A Secular Country: Evidence From A Voting Game In France," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(2), pages 1187-1206, April.
    2. Valfort, Marie-Anne, 2020. "Anti-Muslim discrimination in France: Evidence from a field experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    3. 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.
    4. Morten Størling Hedegaard & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2018. "The Price of Prejudice," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 40-63, January.
    5. Jacquemet, Nicolas & Yannelis, Constantine, 2012. "Indiscriminate discrimination: A correspondence test for ethnic homophily in the Chicago labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 824-832.
    6. Samuel Bowles & Glenn C. Loury & Rajiv Sethi, 2014. "Group Inequality," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 129-152, February.
    7. Neyt, Brecht & Vandenbulcke, Sarah & Baert, Stijn, 2018. "Education Level and Mating Success: Undercover on Tinder," IZA Discussion Papers 11933, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Trogdon, Justin G. & Allaire, Benjamin T., 2014. "The effect of friend selection on social influences in obesity," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 153-164.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo, 2016. "Field Experiments on Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Kwan, Ying Keung & Ip, Wai Cheung & Kwan, Patrick, 2000. "A crime index with Thurstone's scaling of crime severity," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 237-244.
    11. Olof Åslund & Lena Hensvik & Oskar Nordström Skans, 2014. "Seeking Similarity: How Immigrants and Natives Manage in the Labor Market," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(3), pages 405-441.
    12. Feng Li & Venky Nagar, 2013. "Diversity and Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(3), pages 529-544, September.
    13. Luca Paolo Merlino & Max Friedrich Steinhardt & Liam Wren-Lewis, 2019. "More than Just Friends? School Peers and Adult Interracial Relationships," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(3), pages 663-713.
    14. Chen, Josie I. & Foster, Andrew & Putterman, Louis, 2019. "Identity, trust and altruism: An experiment on preferences and microfinance lending," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    15. Lendie Follett & Heath Henderson, 2022. "A hybrid approach to targeting social assistance," Papers 2201.01356, arXiv.org.
    16. Lacetera, Nicola & Macis, Mario & Mele, Angelo, 2014. "Viral Altruism? Generosity and Social Contagion in Online Networks," IZA Discussion Papers 8171, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Ong, David & Wang, Jue, 2015. "Income attraction: An online dating field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 13-22.
    18. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli & Jiabin Wu, 2016. "The Interplay of Cultural Aversion and Assortativity for the Emergence of Cooperation," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 121, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    19. Fabio Landini & Natalia Montinari & Paolo Pin & Marco Piovesan, 2014. "Friendship Network in the Classroom: Parents Bias and Peer Effects," Discussion Papers 14-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    20. Nemmara K. Chidambaran & Yun Liu & Nagpurnanand Prabhala, 2022. "Director diversity and inclusion: At the table but in the game?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 193-225, March.

    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:eee:socmed:v:125:y:2015:i:c:p:19-31. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    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.