Tie Strength, Embeddedness, and Social Influence: A Large-Scale Networked Experiment

Sinan Aral () and Dylan Walker ()
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Sinan Aral: MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
Dylan Walker: School of Management, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215

Management Science, 2014, vol. 60, issue 6, 1352-1370

Abstract: We leverage the newly emerging business analytical capability to rapidly deploy and iterate large-scale, microlevel, in vivo randomized experiments to understand how social influence in networks impacts consumer demand. Understanding peer influence is critical to estimating product demand and diffusion, creating effective viral marketing, and designing “network interventions” to promote positive social change. But several statistical challenges make it difficult to econometrically identify peer influence in networks. Though some recent studies use experiments to identify influence, they have not investigated the social or structural conditions under which influence is strongest. By randomly manipulating messages sent by adopters of a Facebook application to their 1.3 million peers, we identify the moderating effect of tie strength and structural embeddedness on the strength of peer influence. We find that both embeddedness and tie strength increase influence. However, the amount of physical interaction between friends, measured by coappearance in photos, does not have an effect. This work presents some of the first large-scale in vivo experimental evidence investigating the social and structural moderators of peer influence in networks. The methods and results could enable more effective marketing strategies and social policy built around a new understanding of how social structure and peer influence spread behaviors in society. This paper was accepted by Alok Gupta, special issue on business analytics .

Keywords: peer influence; social contagion; social networks; viral marketing; information systems; randomized experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (81)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:60:y:2014:i:6:p:1352-1370

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