Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/81323 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IFN Working Paper No. 886
Publisher: 
Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm
Abstract: 
Users of the social networking service Facebook have the possibility to post status updates for their friends to read. In turn, friends may react to these short messages by writing comments or by pressing a Like button to show their appreciation. Making use of five Swedish accounts, we set up a natural field experiment to study whether users are more prone to Like an update if someone else has done so before. We distinguish between three different treatment conditions: (i) one unknown user Likes the update, (ii) three unknown users Like the update and (iii) one peer Likes the update. Whereas the first condition had no effect, both the second and the third increased the probability to express a positive opinion by a factor of two or more, suggesting that both number of predecessors and social proximity matters. We identify three reasonable explanations for the observed herding behavior and isolate conformity as the primary mechanism in our experiment.
Subjects: 
Herding Behavior
Conformity
Peer Effects
Field Experiment
JEL: 
A14
C93
D03
D83
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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