Search results

This study traces the boundaries of online-based social networks and its possible extensions and intersections with offline social networks. It focuses on the massive multiplayer online (MMO) gaming community. Most online gaming research has only addressed one side of the equation, that is, the online aspect of social interaction, omitting the offline context. The primary objective is to look at both offline and online social contexts of gamers. The data analyzed here are part of a bigger research project. Using a sample of 242 respondents and a total of 1,452 social ties (three online and three offline) this work addresses the differences and similarities between online gamer’s offline and online networks. Around 72% of the participants were between the ages of 18 and 37. This group provides insight into the management of social interactions and ties in the digital age among millennials and the coming-of-age of Generation Z. The analysis suggests that overall offline ties are slightly more important than online. Still, this does not imply that online ties are not meaningful at all. The length of their online relationships plays a significant role in how participants qualify their ties. Most participants that had not met face-to-face were willing to meet their online ties. They also reported sharing personal and everyday life matters with their online social network at a lower rate of their offline network. Time spent with online relationships stemming from online gaming and a cooperative environment is more likely to be considered higher quality time. This suggests that in MMOs the gap between online and offline relationships is becoming narrower.

Despite the growing popularity of internet based social media on e-commerce platforms, systematic examination of the emerging phenomenon is scarce. This paper aims to study whether online retailers ' social activity on e-commerce platforms improves their business performance, and if it does, what are the underlying mechanisms.

The paper proposes a typology of online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms. Then drawing on social capital theory and social network theory, the authors develop hypotheses that relate online retailers ' social activities to their business performance. The hypotheses are tested using a large dataset collected from an e-commerce platform in China.

The paper shows that: online retailers ' social activities for friend-making improve their business performance, regardless of the directional attribute of the activities; social activities for advice-seeking decrease online retailers ' business performance; and social activities for advice-giving increase online retailers ' business performance.

The data in the empirical study are from an e-commerce platform in China, hence the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses further.

The paper includes implications for e-commerce market makers and online retailers operating on e-commerce platforms. The authors show that online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms can be an important source of business value. However certain types of social activities may hurt online retailers ' business performance, implying the necessity of a thoughtful social activity strategy in online marketplaces.

This paper represents an early effort to study whether online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms improve their business performance and the underlying mechanisms of the effect.

With the advent of the Digital 2.0 era, online doctor–patient (D–P) interaction has become increasingly popular. However, due to the fact that doctors use their fragmented time to serve patients, online D–P interaction inevitably has some problems, such as the lack of pertinence in the reply content and doctors' relative unfamiliarity with their individual patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to excavate whether potential D–P social ties and D–P knowledge ties accentuate or attenuate the influence of patient selection (online and offline selection).

The authors used the methods of text mining and empirical analysis on the structured and unstructured data of an online consultation platform in China to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings illustrate that the potential D–P social ties increase the influence on patient selection, as do the potential D–P knowledge ties. Specifically, the effect of social ties on patient selection is positively moderated by patient health literacy. Conversely, health literacy weakens the link between knowledge ties and patient selection. In addition, the doctor's title weakens the influence of social ties on patient selection, in contrast to knowledge ties (partially).

This study provides guidance for doctors and patients on how to communicate effectively and alleviate tension within D–P relationships. The study’s findings have both theoretical and practical implications for both doctors' and online platforms' decision-making.

Social capital has been identified as a valuable resource that can lead to various positive outcomes of social activities in both online and offline communities. The purpose of this paper is to argue that social capital can also be an important ingredient in the development of adverse outcomes, such as technology addiction.

Based on social capital theory and prior research related to perceived integration, a research model that reflects the effects of online and offline social capitals as well as perceived integration on mobile social networking service (SNS) addiction was developed and empirically examined based on data collected from 458 mobile SNS users in China.

The structural equation modeling analysis shows that online social interaction ties and online social supports positively affect mobile SNS addiction, whereas offline social supports and online social identification negatively affect mobile SNS addiction. In addition, perceived integration between online and offline channels by using mobile SNS positively influences online social interaction ties, offline social interaction ties, and mobile SNS addiction.

From the practical perspective, the results of the study offer interesting implications for managing mobile SNS addiction. The study found that online social interaction ties and online social support positively influence mobile SNS addiction, whereas offline social support negatively influence mobile SNS addiction.

The mobile SNS users should invest more time to participate in offline social activities and maintain good social relationships with their family, colleagues, and friends in the real world.

The present study has both theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, unlike many previous studies tend to regard social capital as the predictor of positive outcomes of users’ social activities, the study contributes to the extant information systems literature by exploring the potential negative consequences of social capital on users’ social lives. The results of the study indicate that social capital is a significant predictor of mobile SNS addiction.

Most studies on tie strength have focused on its definition, calculation and applications, but have not paid much attention to how tie strength can help analyse online social networks. Because ties play different roles in a network depending on their strength, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between tie strength and network behaviours.

The authors propose a simple metric for tie strength measurement and then apply it to an online social network extracted from a blog network. These networks are massive in size and have technology for efficient data collection, thereby presenting the possibility of measuring tie strength objectively. From the results several key social network properties are studied to see how tie strength may be used as a metric to explain certain characteristics in social networks.

The online networks exhibit all the structural properties of an actual social network, not only in following the power law but also with regard to the distribution of tie strength. The authors noted a strong association between tie strength and reciprocity, and tie strength and transitivity in online social networks.

This paper highlights the importance of analysing online social networks from a tie strength perspective. The results have important implications for the development of efficient search mechanisms and appropriate group leaders in virtual communities.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of multidimensional friendship networks on economic outcomes in the domain of online people-to-people (P2P) lending markets.

The empirical analysis is based on the data set of transactions and friendship networks from PPDai.com market, the most prominent P2P lending market in China. A friendship hierarchy is proposed in this paper to conceptualize friendship network types. Furthermore, methodologies of t-test, logistic regression and ordinary least squares regression are implemented to measure the impact of multidimensional friendship network variables on the probability of successful funding, as well as the interest rates on funded loans.

The study demonstrates significant effects of structural, relational and cognitive friendship networks using PPDai.com data. The results indicate that structural friendship network measured in terms of the number of friendship ties is a significant factor of funding performance. Additionally, borrowers, who are involved in higher-quality friendship networks, are more likely to be funded and pay lower interest rates on funded loans. Also, the deeper the level of the relationship is in the friendship hierarchy, the more significant will be the effect of friendship on the final economic results. Furthermore, quality is more important than quantity in determining funding performance.

This paper is the first to study the effects of multidimensional friendship networks on economic outcome variables in the domain of online P2P lending, thus broadening the theory of multidimensional social capital, which can deepen our understanding about how social networks work and have significant implications practically and theoretically.

In this essay, we argue that understanding of meaning in relation to organizational networks warrants a more prominent place in organizational theorizing, because it fulfils a distinct role in the emergence and evolution of networks. Whereas prior studies have tended to address network structures or narrative structures, we suggest that organizational processes might be better understood when addressing the role of meaning and network structures simultaneously. We explain the implications of our argument in an online context, given the growing significance of digitally enabled networks on organizational sociality, and draw on examples in the context of organizational knowledge sharing to support our argument. We conclude by introducing a communication flow model to support the further development of research on organizational meaning networks.

The purpose is to understand the fundamental mechanism of the consumer decision-making process and how perceived financial risk of search and experience goods influences electronic word-of-mouth adoption (e-WOMA) on social networking sites (SNSs), which will lead to purchase intention.

Drawing on information processing theory, the study conceptualizes a moderated mediation model to investigate the underlying influence of perceived financial risk and online social ties on e-WOMA and the subsequent effect on online purchase intention. Survey data from 275 individuals were analyzed through statistical tools using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

The results revealed that e-WOMA mediates the effect of perceived financial risk of search and experience goods on online purchase intention. Strength of online social ties on SNSs positively moderates the electric word of mouth adoption for both the experience and search goods.

The limitation of this study was about the researcher's restrictions related to the length of the survey. Moreover, causal explanations can't be deduced as this is a cross-sectional study.

This research offers insight into the consumers that allow marketers to dive into the target market. Marketers should focus on social ties importance while selling products/services of markets online.

The study is novel in the context of an emerging economy to educate marketers on the product categorization of search goods and experience goods based on financial risk.

A question of interest is whether online social networks are effective in promoting behavioral changes and weight loss. The purpose of this paper is to examine the contagion effect of an online buddy network on individuals’ self-monitoring behavior.

This study collects data from an online weight-loss community and constructs an online buddy network. This study compares the effects of the network structure of the buddy network and the actor attributes when predicting self-monitoring performance by employing the auto-logistic actor attribute models.

This study confirms the contagion effect on weigh-in behavior in the online buddy network. The contagion effect is significantly predictive when controlling for actor attribute and other network structure effects.

There is limited evidence that one’s weight-related behavior can be affected by online social contacts. This study contributes to the literature on peer influence on health by examining the contagion effect on weight-related behavior between online buddies. The findings can assist in designing peer-based interventions to harness influence from online social contacts for weight loss.

The use of social networking sites (SNSs) can promote life satisfaction mainly because of their social relationship benefits. Although prior studies examined the roles of different types of social capital (SC), the association between online and offline SC is ignored. This research addresses this gap by uncovering a mechanism of transformation between online and offline SC in terms of bonding and bridging types when linking SNSs usage and life satisfaction.

Categorizing the concept of SC into four sub-types from bonding/bridging and online/offline dimensions, the paper establishes a theoretical framework based on the transformation mechanism among these four kinds of SC. A component-based approach, partial least square method, is chosen for hypothesis testing with a survey-based sample collected from WeChat users.

First, SNSs usage is positively related to life satisfaction and four types of SC (i.e. online/offline and bonding/bridging SC). Second, both online bonding SC and offline bridging SC are positively related to life satisfaction and can mediate the relationship between SNSs usage and life satisfaction. Third, offline bonding SC is positively related to online bonding SC and can mediate the relationship between SNSs usage and online bonding SC; on the contrary, online bridging SC is positively related to offline bridging SC and can mediate the relationship between SNSs usage and offline bridging SC.

In the environment of SNSs, users can take vigorous strategies to better balance online and offline spaces and improve life satisfaction by adapting to the characteristics of SNSs in developing different types of SC. Specifically, it is encouraged for users to transfer online bridging SC into offline space and offline bonding SC into online space.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study exploring the association between online and offline SC when linking SNSs usage and life satisfaction. Instead of the single transformation direction from online to offline in prior Internet research, this research has revealed different transformation directions between online and offline SC in terms of bonding and bridging types in the context of SNSs.