In this paper we study the structure of the bilateral communication links within Online Consumer Communication Networks (OCCNs), such as virtual communities. Compared to the offline world, consumers in online networks are highly flexible to choose their communication partners and little is known...

Network formation among individuals constitutes an important part of many OR processes, but relatively little is known about how individuals make their linking decisions in networks. This article provides an investigation of heuristic effects in individual linking decisions for network formation...