Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/237541 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CERS-IE Working Papers No. CERS-IE WP - 2020/53
Publisher: 
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Budapest
Abstract: 
Can outside interventions foster socio-culturally diverse friendships? We executed a large field experiment that randomized the seating charts of 182 primary-school classrooms (N=2,996 students) for the duration of one semester. We found that being seated next to each other increased the probability of a mutual friendship from 15% to 22% on average. Furthermore, induced proximity increased the latent propensity toward friendship equally for all students, regardless of students' dyadic similarity with respect to educational achievement, gender, and ethnicity. However, the probability of a manifest friendship increased more among similar than among dissimilar students. Our findings demonstrate that a scalable light-touch intervention can affect face-to-face networks and foster diverse friendships in groups that already know each other, but they also highlight that transgressing boundaries defined by ethnicity and gender remains an uphill battle.
Subjects: 
Friendship formation
Social networks
Diversity
Homophily
Randomized field experiment
Deskmates
JEL: 
C93
I21
I24
J18
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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