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Assessment of Social Interaction Behaviors
Published on: February 25, 2011
Social influence on selection behaviour: Distinguishing local- and global-driven preferential attachment
Xue Pan1, Lei Hou1, Kecheng Liu1,2
1Informatics Research Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6UD, United Kingdom.
Plos One
|April 14, 2017
Summary
Human selection behavior is primarily driven by local popularity, with global popularity playing a minor role. This suggests local social influence is more critical in decision-making processes.
Area of Science:
- Social Sciences
- Network Science
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Social influence significantly impacts human selection behaviors, leading to popularity dynamics where successful entities gain more attention.
- Both global system information and local social network information influence individual choices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine whether local or global information is more influential in user selection behaviors.
- To propose and validate a network model explaining user-object interaction evolution under social influence.
Main Methods:
- Comparative analysis of local-based versus global-based influence on selection behavior.
- Development of a network model incorporating local-driven and global-driven preferential attachment mechanisms.
- Simulation of user-object interactions to reproduce empirical observations.
Main Results:
- Selection behavior is predominantly driven by local object popularity.
- Global popularity serves a supplementary role, influencing choices mainly when local information is scarce.
- Simulations indicate approximately 75% of user attachments are driven by local popularity.
Conclusions:
- Local social influence is the primary determinant of user selection behavior, outweighing global popularity.
- The proposed network model accurately reflects user-object interaction dynamics influenced by social factors.
- Findings suggest a 75% probability for users to base selections on local popularity in contexts like Yelp business choices.
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