How does anonymous online peer communication affect prevention behavior? Evidence from a laboratory experiment.

Indrani Saran,Margaret Mcconnell,Günther Fink,William Stewart Agras

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207679

Indrani Saran, Margaret Mcconnell + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207679

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Abstract

While the importance of social networks for health behaviors is well-recognized, relatively little is known regarding the accuracy of anonymous online communication and its impact on health behavior. In 2012, we conducted a laboratory experiment in Boston, Massachusetts with 679 individuals to understand how anonymous online communication affects individual prevention decisions. Participants had to opt for or against investing in prevention over three sessions, each consisting of 15 experimental rounds. In the third session only, participants could share their experiences with a group of 1–3 other anonymous participants after each round. Groups exchanged an average of 16 messages over the 15 rounds of the third session. 70% of messages contained information about the subject’s prevention decision and the resulting health outcome. Participants were more likely to communicate when they prevented than when they did not, with prevention failures resulting in the highest probability of sending a message. Nonetheless, receiving an additional message reporting prevention increased the odds a subject would prevent by 32 percent. We find that participants tend to adopt the prevention behavior reported by others, with less weight given to the reported outcomes of prevention, suggesting that social networks may influence behaviors through more than just information provision.

Highlights

A growing body of evidence suggests that social networks may play an important role in people’s health behaviors such as smoking [1], alcohol consumption [2], the types of foods eaten [3], and amount of exercise performed [4]
Given the high proportion of college students in our sample, the distribution of income may not accurately represent the socio-economic background of our participants. In terms of their general prevention behavior, individuals reported a mean of 1.3 dentist visits over the past year and 88% believed that all children should vaccinated
As people increasingly turn to online sources for health information, there is growing interest in finding ways to harness social networks for improving health behaviors while limiting the negative impacts of mis-information

Summary

Introduction

A growing body of evidence suggests that social networks may play an important role in people’s health behaviors such as smoking [1], alcohol consumption [2], the types of foods eaten [3], and amount of exercise performed [4]. While some of these correlations within networks could emerge because people tend to associate with those who share similar characteristics or because of common environmental influences [5,6,7], there is experimental evidence that social networks may directly influence people’s health behaviors [8,9,10]. Recent studies suggest that information received from peers related to the efficacy of health technologies can encourage uptake of effective health products such as vaccines [11], insecticide-treated bednets for malaria prevention [12], and artemisinin-based combination therapy for malaria treatment [13]

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