Start Date
12-17-2013
Description
Cohesion and structural equivalence are two competing network models to explain diffusion of innovation. The dispute of which model plays a more influential role has not been resolved. This paper attempts to reconcile this problem in a large network setting -- adoption of Caller Ringback Tone (CRBT) in a cellular telephone conversation network. Since the network is at societal scale, we use a novel technique to extract multiple densely connected and self-contained subpopulations from the network. We found subpopulation size in such million-node network only falls in two levels, 200 and 500. Using a new auto-probit model, we compare the competing influences of cohesion and structural equivalence on each subpopulation. Finally we use meta-analysis to summarize the estimated parameters from all subpopulations. The results show CRBT adoption is affected by both cohesion and structural equivalence. Cohesion has consistent pattern across different subpopulation, while structural equivalence changes with subpopulation size.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Bin; Pavlou, Paul; Krishnan, Ramayya; and Krackhardt, David, "Comparing Peer Influences in Multiple Large Networks – An Empirical Study on Caller Ringback Tone" (2013). ICIS 2013 Proceedings. 20.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2013/proceedings/KnowledgeManagement/20
Comparing Peer Influences in Multiple Large Networks – An Empirical Study on Caller Ringback Tone
Cohesion and structural equivalence are two competing network models to explain diffusion of innovation. The dispute of which model plays a more influential role has not been resolved. This paper attempts to reconcile this problem in a large network setting -- adoption of Caller Ringback Tone (CRBT) in a cellular telephone conversation network. Since the network is at societal scale, we use a novel technique to extract multiple densely connected and self-contained subpopulations from the network. We found subpopulation size in such million-node network only falls in two levels, 200 and 500. Using a new auto-probit model, we compare the competing influences of cohesion and structural equivalence on each subpopulation. Finally we use meta-analysis to summarize the estimated parameters from all subpopulations. The results show CRBT adoption is affected by both cohesion and structural equivalence. Cohesion has consistent pattern across different subpopulation, while structural equivalence changes with subpopulation size.