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 constitutes an important part of many social and economic processes, but relatively little is known about how individuals make their linking decisions. This article provides an experimental investigation of behavioral effects in individual decisions of network formation. Our...

We propose a model on strategic formation of communication networks with (i) link specificity: the more direct links somebody maintains, the less she can specify her attention per link, the lower her links’ value, while this negative externality was previously ignored in the communication...

We propose a model on strategic formation of communication networks with (i) link specificity: the more direct links somebody maintains, the less she can specify her attention per link, the lower her links’ value, while this negative externality was previously ignored in the communication...

Network formation constitutes an important part of many social and economic processes, but relatively little is known about how individuals make their linking decisions in networks. This article provides an experimental investigation of behavioral effects in individual decisions of network...

We analyze the structure of bilateral communication links among consumers in virtual communities by a game-theoretic model of network formation. First, link specificity is incorporated, meaning that the more direct links somebody has to maintain with others, the less she is able to specify her...