Individual Choices in Dynamic Networks: An Experiment on Social Preferences

Dennie van Dolder and Vincent Buskens

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Game-theoretic models of network formation typically assume that people create relations so as to maximize their own outcome in the network. Recent experiments on network formation suggest that the assumption of self-interest might be unwarranted and that social preferences, such as altruism and inequality aversion, play a role in the formation of social networks. We developed an experiment to systematically investigate whether people show preferences for outcomes of others during network formation. We find that such preferences play a role when network decisions degenerate to simple two-person decision tasks. In more complex environments, however, we find little evidence for social preferences as a significant decision criterion. Furthermore, we find some evidence for farsighted behavior in network formation.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092276 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 92276&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0092276

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0092276

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().