Homophily Theory Research Articles

A novel framework to classify opinion dynamics of mobile agents under the bounded confidence model

The formation and evolution of public opinion have been widely studied to understand how consensus forms due to atomic interactions between individuals. While many studies have paid attention to modelling influence and interaction, most of the literature assumes static agents, ignoring the frequent changes in physical locations expected in real life. This feature naturally allows humans to interact with diverse people and avoid disagreement, which heavily impacts the co-evolution of opinions, communities or isolation in human societies. Our previous work proposed an extension of the bounded confidence model inspired by the theories of homophily and cognitive dissonance, which concern humans’ natural behaviours of attraction and disagreement. Although this demonstrated a marked difference to a static opinion model and purely random mobility, the limited experiments gave little insight into the causes or the resulting structures of consensus. This article addresses these shortcomings through a thorough investigation of the impact of mobility modelled by different mechanisms. Through extensive simulation, we observe a transition from multiple stable opinion clusters to complete consensus and a shift from a geographically based organisation to isolated structure-less agents. Lastly, we propose a novel classification of the different outcomes of self-organisation in opinion models, highlighting the patterns of emerging behaviours across the spectrum of interaction range and influence parameters.

C-DeepTrust: A Context-Aware Deep Trust Prediction Model in Online Social Networks.

Trust prediction provides valuable support for decision making, information dissemination, and product promotion in online social networks. As a complex concept in the social network community, trust relationships among people can be established virtually based on: 1) their interaction behaviors, e.g., the ratings and comments that they provided; 2) the contextual information associated with their interactions, e.g., location and culture; and 3) the relative temporal features of interactions and the time periods when the trust relationships hold. Most of the existing works only focus on some aspects of trust, and there is not a comprehensive study of user trust development that considers and incorporates 1)-3) in trust prediction. In this article, we propose a context-aware deep trust prediction model C-DeepTrust to fill this gap. First, we conduct user feature modeling to obtain the user's static and dynamic preference features in each context. Static user preference features are obtained from all the ratings and reviews that a user provided, while dynamic user preference features are obtained from the items rated/reviewed by the user in time series. The obtained context-aware user features are then combined and fed into the multilayer projection structure to further mine the context-aware latent features. Finally, the context-aware trust relationships between users are calculated by their context-aware feature vector cosine similarities according to the social homophily theory, which shows a pervasive property of social networks that trust relationships are more likely to be developed among similar people. Extensive experiments conducted on two real-world datasets show the superior performance of our approach compared with the representative baseline methods.

Learning from Their Daughters: Family Exposure to Gender Disparity and Female Representation in Male-Led Ventures

We build on recent studies on daughter-to-father influence to explore how male founders’ fatherhood of daughters impacts female representation in their ventures. We find that, conditional on the total number of children, fathering an additional daughter versus a son is associated with a 4% (11%) increase in female director (employee) representation. This daughter-to-father effect gradually matures as daughters grow up and socialize in schools and workplaces, and it increases as daughters age, suggesting that male founders vicariously learn from their daughters about the constraints women face throughout the daughters’ life cycles. Heterogeneity analyses (regarding founder cohort, divorce status, and social class), combined with qualitative evidence, further substantiate the plausibility of vicarious learning as a potential yet understudied mechanism underlying daughter effects. In addition, daughter effects on employee recruitment are concentrated in microbusinesses (number of employees is ≤10) where the founder is close in decision authority to all employees. These findings add important nuances to our understanding of daughter effects in organizational contexts and extend theory of gender homophily in organizations. This paper was accepted by Olav Sorenson, organizations. Funding: K. Wennberg acknowledges funding from the Swedish Royal Academy of Letter. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4727 .

Homogenous or heterogeneous? Demand effect of reviewer similarity in online video website

PurposeNowadays, online platforms which provide products or services try to implement their homegrown communities to facilitate users' social interactions. Reviewers' activities in these communities can reflect their interests. Based on the theory of homophily, the authors aim to explore the impacts of the reviewer preference similarity and opinion similarity on the rate of product diffusion.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors construct reviewer similarity network based on their common interests and propose typical network metrics to measure reviewer preference similarity. Second, the authors measure reviewer opinion similarity with natural language processing. Finally, based on a panel data from an online video platform in China, both the fixed-effect and random-effect panel data models are constructed.FindingsThe authors find that reviewer preference similarity has a positive effect on the product diffusion, whereas reviewer opinion similarity has a negative effect on the diffusion. Furthermore, temporal distance moderates the relationship between reviewer similarity and the product diffusion. As a double-edged sword, review preference similarity hinders product diffusion in the initial phase, whereas benefits it in the later phase. Reviewer opinion similarity is always detrimental to product diffusion, especially in the initial phase.Originality/valueThis paper extends the understanding of homophily from the micro peer level to the group level by constructing reviewers' similarity network and highlights the important role of reviewer preference similarity and opinion similarity in product diffusion. The results also provide important insights for managers to design and implement diversity strategies for better product adoption in the community context.

How women CEOs’ financial knowledge and firm homophily affect venture performance

We examine the impact of female-led venture firms’ knowledge of alternative forms of financial capital and its effect on their financial performance as compared to male-led ventures.We contend that women chief executive officers (CEOs) leading such ventures faced unique historical and stereotypical challenges that impeded their financial knowledge and subsequent firm performance. We utilize liberal and social feminism frameworks, complemented with homophily theory to illustrate how female CEOs can overcome these challenges by increasing the percentage of women in the ownership structure of female-led venture firms.

‘Are online reviews the new shepherd?’ –examining herd behaviour in wearable technology adoption for personal healthcare

ABSTRACT Use of wearable technology for personal healthcare management is envisioned to play an instrumental role in promoting social sustainability by ensuring good health and wellbeing of all. Despite the upward market trend in purchase of wearable technology devices, their usage for personal healthcare remains a concern. An integrated model based on herd behaviour, theory of homophily and tenets of uncertainties drawn from initial trust theory is proposed and tested to examine the role of online reviews on herding of wearable technology adoption for personal healthcare management. A survey was administered on 434 wearable technology users, and data was analysed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with Smart PLS. The structural path analysis indicates that observing the online reviews written by homophilous users as well as uncertainties related to personal propensity and firm reputation positively influence individuals’ herding in wearable technology adoption for personal healthcare. The present research contributes to emerging literature on the role of online reviews on herding in wearable technology adoption for attaining social sustainability. The results of this study can be used by practitioners for designing strategies that facilitates consumption and usage of wearable technologies for personal healthcare management.

We Are All in This Together, or Are We? Job Strain and Coping in the Context of an E-Healthcare System Implementation

ABSTRACT Doctors and paraprofessionals operate in stressful environments that jeopardize their well-being and quality of care. E-healthcare systems have been promoted by government initiatives (e.g., HITECH act) to support healthcare services. Recent evidence suggests, however, that these systems contribute to job strain. Drawing on findings from a qualitative study and proximity and homophily theories, we integrate the healthcare context to develop and test a research model of friendship network ties among and between doctors and paraprofessionals as a coping mechanism for alleviating job strain. We test our model in a year-long field study in a hospital that implemented a new e-healthcare system, with two waves of data collected from 152 doctors and 731 paraprofessionals. Our findings move beyond the classical view of friendship as a conduit of coping by suggesting that the source of friendship network ties could reduce or aggravate strain as doctors and paraprofessionals continue to interact with the system over time.

Search committee diversity and applicant pool representation of women and underrepresented minorities: A quasi-experimental field study.

The diversification of applicant pools constitutes an important step for broadening the participation of women and underrepresented minorities (URMs) in the workforce. The current study focuses on recruiting diverse applicant pools in an academic setting. We test strategies grounded in homophily theory to attract a diverse set of applicants for open faculty positions. Analysis of recruitment data (13,750 job applications) showed that women search committee chairs and greater percentages of women on search committees related to more women applicants and that URMs search chairs and a greater percentage of URM members on search committees related to more URM applicants, resulting in 23% more women applicant pools with a woman chair and over 100% more URM applicants for a URM chair. Furthermore, women and URMs actively engage in ways to reach out to a more diverse set of applicants, whereas men and non-URMs' behavior maintains the status quo. We discuss the implications and advancement of homophily theory that can ultimately increase the representation of women and URM in the workforce. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

MulSetRank: Multiple set ranking for personalized recommendation from implicit feedback

Learning user preferences from implicit feedback through collaborative ranking is an approach that has received increased attention from researchers in recent years. The existing approaches focus on modeling the ranking differences between observed and unobserved items for independent individuals, ignoring their collaborative effects on the social recommendation. However, homophily theory suggests that, for a specific user, potential preference items can be mined from its friends or users with similar interests. Motivated by this observation, this paper presents a novel setwise ranking model that considers users’ preference rankings among multiple sets of items. Unlike existing models, which only consider the preference differences between observed and unobserved items, our model assumes that some potential preference items are in-between. We propose a collaborative method that exploits users’ behavioral similarities to mine users’ potential preference items. Our approach allows us to capture users’ collaborative signals at a finer granularity. We also develop a sampling method to efficiently compute the setwise preference probability. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model based on several benchmark datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.

Selective migration in American interstate residential flow: Similarity of Big Five personality factors among origin and destination state residents

Two studies using the 48 contiguous American states tested the general hypothesis that the percent of the total number of movers leaving an origin state that migrates to a particular destination state is related to the degree of similarity in Big Five personality between the residents of the origin state and the destination state. Datasets for 2005–2006 and 2016–2017 were analyzed. The hypothesis was tested using Pearson correlation and multiple regression strategies without and with consideration of the following state-level statistical controls: socioeconomic status based on two economic and two educational variables, unemployment rate, White population percent, urban population percent, conservatism, and road distance between state capitals for the 48 states. A consistent pattern of support for the hypothesis was found for each of the Big Five personality dimensions—openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—for both datasets without and with statistical controls. Results without statistical controls demonstrated that movers from states with residents higher on a Big Five personality dimension indeed are more likely to migrate to states with residents higher on that personality dimension, and that movers from states with residents lower on a personality dimension are more likely to migrate to states with residents lower on that personality dimension. Similar results were obtained with statistical controls but the relations for conscientiousness were in the supportive direction but not statistically significant. It is speculated that these state-level relations are grounded in parallel individual-level relations suggested by the theories of selective migration, homophily, similarity-attraction, and person-environment fit.

The Association Between Social and Spatial Closeness With PrEP Conversations Among Latino Men Who Have Sex With Men.

US Latino men who have sex with men (LMSM) are a group at highest risk for HIV. One driver of HIV among LMSM is inadequate access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) information. The social network theory of homophily suggests that sharing similar sociodemographic factors could influence PrEP conversations within networks. This study aimed to determine how the effects of homophily across sociodemographic, immigration, cultural, and PrEP-related factors are associated with PrEP-related communication. This study was conducted in Miami-Dade County, FL. Data collected between August 2018 and October 2019 included 10 sociocentric friendship groups of 13 LMSM (N = 130). Participants were recruited using respondent-driven sampling by a community-based organization in Miami. We used the multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure to identify the effects of homophily and relationship characteristics on PrEP-related conversations using R software. More frequent PrEP-related conversations were associated with dyadic friendships characterized by homophily on knowledge of PrEP effectiveness, heterophily on depressive symptom severity, home addresses proximity, friend closeness, and interaction frequency. Past PrEP-related conversation frequency also increased based on heterophily on the Latino cultural value of familism (ie, emotional support to family). Racial homophily, heterophily on severity of depressive symptoms, home addresses proximity, friendship closeness, and frequency of interactions increased likelihood to encourage a friend to use PrEP. Social and spatial closeness and homophily play a role in PrEP-related conversations. Information from social networks contextualized in geographic settings can be elucidated to contribute toward the design of novel opportunities to end HIV.

Bridging Caste Divides: Middle‐Status Ambivalence, Elite Closure, and Lower‐Status Social Withdrawal

AbstractNetwork theory and research have identified the powerful dynamic of homophily whereby individuals are more likely to connect with similar rather than dissimilar others. However, less is known about when individuals might connect with dissimilar others to enhance organizational diversity benefits and mitigate social exclusion. This study builds upon prior evidence linking homophily to both elite group closure and lower‐status self‐segregating social withdrawal to propose a new dynamic of middle‐status ambivalence toward homophily, generating a greater propensity toward diversity. Indian society offers a unique context of a legally codified, stable, three‐tiered status hierarchy to test the idea that middle‐status individuals will develop the most diverse networks. Using a unique longitudinal friendship network dataset, we find empirical support for our prediction, a novel contribution extending classic homophily theory. In addition, due to potent status dynamics we theorize and find that lowest‐status group members initiate more ties over time but also exhibit lower tie stability and greater losses of early ties than higher‐status group members, resulting in the appearance of lowest‐status group homophilous withdrawal. Overall, we advance homophily theory and offer practical suggestions for organizations seeking to enhance social ties across diversity and improve the effectiveness of social inclusion policies.

Homophily and peer influence in early-stage new venture informal investment

Conceptualising early-stage new venture informal investors as co-entrepreneurs whose actions are socially embedded, we examine the role of social influence and how it interplays with entrepreneurial experience at the individual level leading to informal investment. We extend theories of social homophily and social influence to argue that informal investment decisions are influenced by shared experience and entrepreneurism in peer groups. We test our hypotheses with a multi-level model using first a large cross-country dataset and next in depth within a country. Our analysis reveals that both individual entrepreneurship experience and peer group-embedded experience significantly influence the likelihood that an individual becomes an early-stage investor. Furthermore, these social effects substitute for the lack of individual entrepreneurial experience.

Examining the Role of Homophily in the C-Suite for Strategic Decision-Making

How firms differentiate their products from competitors is a fundamental strategic decision for the performance of a firm. From the broader upper echelons perspective, a firm’s strategy is shaped by the Top Management Team (TMT), consisting of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and his top executives. The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is usually the driver of differentiation. We need to scrutinize CEO-CMO duos in terms of their demographics and experience to present the underlying drivers out of which differentiation emerges. According to homophily theory, executives prefer to work with others, which are similar to them. Therefore, we set out to examine differentiation decisions of homogenous CEO-CMO duos in terms of demographics and experience using a cross-industry panel of U.S. S&P 500 firms over 12 years. We show evidence, that homogenous duos, which are highly educated, marketing experienced or male positively influence differentiation. On the opposite duos, in which executives have limited firm-specific experience or less experience because of their age negatively influence differentiation. Based on this evidence we contribute to theory by stressing out the need to combine upper echelons and homophily theory to not neglect significant factors for decision making in TMTs. Furthermore, we contribute to practice by presenting so far unconsidered factors in recruiting and appointing CEOs as well as CMOs.

Examining How Women CEOs’ Financial Knowledge and Ownership Homophily Affect Venture Performance

We examine the impact of female-led firms’ knowledge of alternative forms of financial capital and its effect on their financial performance as compared to male-led ventures. We contend that women entrepreneurs face unique historical and stereotypical challenges when attempting to enhance their financial knowledge and performance. We utilize social and liberal feminism frameworks, complemented with homophily theory to illustrate how female entrepreneurs can overcome these challenges by increasing the proportion of females in the ownership structure of female-led firms.

Proximity and the Formation of Diverse Social Networks: Theory and Evidence

We propose a friendship formation model that distinguishes the role of similarity and physical proximity on friendship patterns. This is a learning-based theory of friendship under which individuals spend time exploring the value of a friendship. The model predicts that friendship patterns exhibit homophily: similarity increases the likelihood of friendship. Higher proximity also increases the likelihood of friendship, and this effect is less pronounced for similar individuals: proximity fosters diversity. To verify the predictions, we use an experiment at selective boarding schools in Peru. While social networks exhibit homophily along multiple dimensions, proximity fosters more diverse friendships. This evidence stands in contrast to the predictions offered by a preference-based theory of homophily.

Linguistic style and gender match in funding intention towards crowdfunding project

Linguistic style and gender match in funding intention towards crowdfunding project

Networking within Divisional Secretaries and its Impact on Organizational Performance (Special reference to Divisional Secretaries in Sri Lanka)

The networking among organizations and within the organization is very important to achieve vision, mission and the performance of any organization. Although there are studies about networking in a global context, it is hard to find networking related studies in the local context. Therefore, this study of networking within divisional secretaries and its impact on their performance is important. The main objective of this study is to analysis the networking within the divisional secretaries and its impact on the performance of those divisional secretaries. The studies depend upon the answers based on the questionnaire survey. Although the networks fall into two principal categories such as inter-firm networks and inter-personal networks, this study is limited to studying interpersonal network. The network is a vague concept and it consists of a set of actors (“nodes”) and the relations (“ties” or “edges”) between these actors. Relevant literature discussed to build the analytical framework and different theories of networking such as theories of self-interest, social exchange and dependency theory, mutual interest and collective action, a family of cognitive theories and theory of homophily. It reviewed the relevant literature on job performance and networking related performance. It also discussed the divisional administration and divisional secretaries. In this study impact of networking on the performance of divisional secretaries was measured with five independent variables such as instrumental network, expressive network, friendship network, advice network and knowledge network. Primary and secondary data were used to analyze the networking related performance. The survey was done throughout the all divisional secretaries in Sri Lanka via a questionnaire and collected data were analyzed by using Structural equation modelling (SEM). According to the study, the most important and affected networking activity which was highly affected by the performance is the knowledge network. Friendship network and instrumental network are the second and third networks effects on performance that is to follow on respectively. The expressive network has a moderate effect on performance while the advice network shows no positive effect on performance.

An examination of the relationship between applicant race and accrued recruitment source information: Implications for applicant withdrawal and test performance

AbstractWe examine the role of accrued recruitment source diagnosticity (i.e., cumulative information from recruitment sources) and show its importance in enhancing diversity in recruitment and selection. First, based on social network and homophily theories, we propose that racial minority candidates will be less likely to use diagnostic recruitment sources, and this lack of use contributes to less organizational attraction and greater withdrawal. Second, based on the realism hypothesis, we theorize that racial differences in accrued recruitment source diagnosticity contribute (in part) to racial differences in selection test performance. Using a sample of candidates in a high‐stakes selection context, we find that White applicants are significantly more likely to use the most diagnostic sources (compared to non‐Whites). Further, applicants with higher accrued recruitment source diagnosticity show greater organizational attraction (before and after testing), withdraw from the hiring process in fewer numbers, and perform significantly better on the selection tests. Altogether, these findings have important theoretical implications because they identify a fairly neglected determinant of recruitment and selection outcomes (accrued recruitment source diagnosticity) and may yield practical implications by suggesting actionable ways organizations can help reduce subgroup differences and enhance diversity.

Determinants and consequences of auditor dyad formation at the top level of audit teams

This study investigates the determinants and consequences of forming dyads at the top level of audit teams, i.e., dyads between concurring and lead auditor. We apply the sociological theory of homophily, i.e., the implicit preference for similar others, to hierarchically structured auditor dyads. Our regression analyses reveal that sharing the same gender and the same ethnicity, measured by dialect, increases the likelihood of dyad formation beyond what one would expect based on the characteristics of the pool of available auditors. Further, we observe that forming auditor dyads sharing the same age is avoided, suggesting that the need to establish a legitimate hierarchical relationship through social differentiation represents a boundary condition for homophily. Testing for the consequences of auditor dyad formation using an instrumental variable approach, we find that auditor dyads sharing the same dialect provide lower audit quality. We conclude that homophily matters in auditor dyad formation with potentially adverse consequences for audit quality.