Abstract
In this paper we explore two contrasting perspectives on individuals' participation in associations. On the one hand, some have considered participation the byproduct of pre-existing friendship ties — the more friends one already has in the association, the more likely he or she is to participate. On the other hand, some have considered participation to be driven by the association's capacity to form new identities — the more new friends one meets in the association, the more likely he or she is to participate. We use detailed temporal data from an online association to adjudicate between these two mechanisms and explore their interplay. Our results show a significant impact of new friendship ties on participation, compared to a negligible impact of pre-existing friends, defined here as ties to other members formed outside of the organization's context. We relate this finding to the sociological literature on participation and we explore its implications in the discussion.
Highlights
Associations between individuals are considered fundamental to the lives of communities and significant for the proper functioning of democracies [1,2,3,4]
Associational life benefits from the association promoting a process that pushes in the opposite direction, i.e., toward dis-embedding engagement with the association from a member’s pre-existing social networks; for example, by promoting ties to new friends through the association
Before estimating the panel vector autocorrelation model (PVAR) model we explore the possibility that the propensity to form new friendships and, of participating more in the life of the association is strongly influenced by the size of the local chapter
Summary
Associations between individuals are considered fundamental to the lives of communities and significant for the proper functioning of democracies [1,2,3,4]. We use social network data collected by one of these associations to determine the relative contribution of the proposed mechanisms to individuals’ levels of participation. Our findings suggest that online associations may benefit more from promoting a new identity for their members rather than from embedding the association into the pre-existing social networks of their members.
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