The economic effects of Facebook

Roberto Mosquera, Mofioluwasademi Odunowo (), Trent McNamara (), Xiongfei Guo () and Ragan Petrie
Additional contact information
Mofioluwasademi Odunowo: Texas A&M University
Trent McNamara: Texas A&M University
Xiongfei Guo: Texas A&M University

Experimental Economics, 2020, vol. 23, issue 2, No 12, 575-602

Abstract: Abstract Social media permeates many aspects of our lives, including how we connect with others, where we get our news and how we spend our time. Yet, we know little about the economic effects for users. In 2017, we ran a large field experiment with over 1765 individuals to document the value of Facebook to users and its causal effect on news, well-being and daily activities. Participants reveal how much they value one week of Facebook usage and are then randomly assigned to a validated Facebook restriction or normal use. One week of Facebook is worth $67. Those who are off Facebook for one week reduce news consumption, are less likely to recognize politically-skewed news stories, report being less depressed and engage in healthier activities. These results are strongest for men. Our results further suggest that, after the restriction, Facebook’s value increases, consistent with information loss or that using Facebook may be addictive.

Keywords: Social media; Field experiment; Value of Facebook; News awareness; Well-being; Gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D83 D91 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10683-019-09625-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:expeco:v:23:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s10683-019-09625-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/10683/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10683-019-09625-y

Access Statistics for this article

Experimental Economics is currently edited by David J. Cooper, Lata Gangadharan and Charles N. Noussair

More articles in Experimental Economics from Springer, Economic Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().