In this issue we feature 9 current papers on the theme of social capital:

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In this issue we have:

1. Homophily and Triadic Closure in Evolving Social Networks

   Irene Crimaldi; Michela Del Vicario; Greg Morrison; Walter Quattrociocchi;

   Massimo Riccaboni

2. Donations, risk attitudes and time preferences: A study on altruism in primary school children

   Silvia Angerer; Daniela Glätzle-Rützler; Philipp Lergetporer; Matthias

   Sutter

3. Peer Effects, Fast Food Consumption and Adolescent Weight Gain

   Bernard Fortin; Myra Yazbeck

4. The Sound of Others: Surprising Evidence of Conformist Behavior

   Crosetto, Paolo; Filippin, Antonio

5. Conspicuous work : peer working time, labour supply, and happiness for male workers

   Collewet M.M.F.; Grip A. de; Koning J. de

6. Just Tell me What my Neighbors Do! Public Policies for Households Recycling

   Ankinée Kirakozian; Christophe Charlier

7. The influence of group identity on farmer’s decision making: an experimental economics approach on a family farming case in Costa Rica

   Schickramm, Lena; Saenz-Segura, Fernando; Schipper, Robert A.; Handgraaf,

   Michel

8. Grading Hampers Cooperative Information Sharing in Group Problem Solving

   Anne-Sophie Hayek; Claudia Toma; Dominique Oberlé; Fabrizio Butera

9. The effect of trust and risk perception on citizen's intention to adopt and use e-government services in Jordan.

   Adel Al Khattab; Hasan Al-Shalabi; Khamis Al-Khattab; Mahmaod Al-Rawad

1. Homophily and Triadic Closure in Evolving Social Networks

   Irene Crimaldi (IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies)

   Michela Del Vicario (IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies)

   Greg Morrison (IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies)

   Walter Quattrociocchi (IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies)

   Massimo Riccaboni (IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies) 

We present a new network model accounting for homophily and triadic closure  in the evolution of social networks. In particular, in our model, each node  is characterized by a number of features and the probability of a link  between two nodes depends on common features. The bipartite network of the  actors and features evolves according to a dynamics that depends on three  parame-ters that respectively regulate the preferential attachment in the  transmission of the features to the nodes, the number of new features per  node, and the power-law behavior of the total number of observed features. We  provide theoretical results and statistical estimators for the parameters of  the model. We validate our approach by means of simulations and an empirical  analysis of a network of scientifc collaborations.

   Keywords: social network, bipartite network, preferential attachment, homophily triadic closure, transitivity

   JEL: C13 C18 Z13

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ial:wpaper:3/2015&r=soc

2. Donations, risk attitudes and time preferences: A study on altruism in primary school children

   Silvia Angerer

   Daniela Glätzle-Rützler

   Philipp Lergetporer

   Matthias Sutter

We present experimental evidence from a bilingual city in Northern Italy on  whether the language spoken by a partner in a prisoner's dilemma game affects  behavior and leads to discrimination. Running a framed field experiment with 828 six- to eleven-year old primary school children in the city of Meran, we  find that cooperation generally increases with age, but that the gap between  cooperation among in-group members and cooperation towards children speaking  another language is considerable and increasing with age. This gap is due to  both, in-group favoritism and language group discrimination.

   Keywords: Cooperation, discrimination, language, children, experiment

   JEL: C91 C93 D03

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:inn:wpaper:2015-07&r=soc

3. Peer Effects, Fast Food Consumption and Adolescent Weight Gain

   Bernard Fortin

   Myra Yazbeck

This paper aims at opening the black box of peer effects in adolescent weight  gain. Using Add Health data on secondary schools in the U.S., we investigate  whether these effects partly flow through the eating habits channel.

Adolescents are assumed to interact through a friendship social network. We  propose a two-equation model. The first equation provides a social  interaction model of fast food consumption. To estimate this equation we use  a quasi maximum likelihood approach that allows us to control for common  environment at the network level and to solve the simultaneity (reflection)  problem. Our second equation is a panel dynamic weight production function  relating an individual’s Body Mass Index z-score (zBMI) to his fast food  consumption and his lagged zBMI, and allowing for irregular intervals in the  data. Results show that there are positive but small peer effects in fast  food consumption among adolescents belonging to a same friendship school  network. Based on our preferred specification, the estimated social  multiplier is 1.15. Our results also suggest that,in the long run, an extra  day of weekly fast food restaurant visits increases zBMI by 4.45% when  ignoring peer effects and by 5.11%, when they are taken into account.

   Keywords: Obesity, overweight, peer effects, social interactions, fast food, spatial models

   JEL: C31 I10 I12

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:criacr:1507&r=soc

4. The Sound of Others: Surprising Evidence of Conformist Behavior

   Crosetto, Paolo (Université de Grenoble)

   Filippin, Antonio (University of Milan) 

It has been shown that subjects tend to follow others' behavior even when the  external signals are uninformative. In this paper we go one step further,  showing that conformism occurs even when the choices of others are not even  presented to the subjects, but just indirectly perceived. We use the "Click" version of the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task, in which subjects can infer the  behavior of others only from the mass of clicks heard. This signal is  payoff-irrelevant and largely uninformative about the actual choices of the  other participants. Moreover, it is never mentioned in the instructions and  therefore it must be spontaneously (and possibly unconsciously) perceived in  order to be used. We control the exposure of subjects to clicks by  implementing treatments with and without earmuffs. Moreover, we test whether  the introduction of a minimal form of commonality, i.e., facing a common  rather than individual resolution of uncertainty, makes conformism more  likely to emerge. We find strong evidence of conformist behavior even in such  an adverse environment. Simply hearing the others clicking affects subjects' behavior. Introducing a common random draw results in a further dramatic  shift of the average choices, in particular by women.

   Keywords: conformism, risk attitude, experiment

   JEL: C81 C91 D81

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9029&r=soc

5. Conspicuous work : peer working time, labour supply, and happiness for male workers

   Collewet M.M.F.

   Grip A. de

   Koning J. de (GSBE)

This paper uncovers conspicuous work as a new form of status seeking that can  explain social interactions in labour supply. We analyse how peer working  time relates to both labour supply and happiness for Dutch male workers.

Using a unique measure of peer weekly working time, we find that mens working  time increases with that of their peers and that peer working time is  negatively related to mens happiness. These findings are consistent with a  conspicuous work model, in which individuals derive status from working time.

   Keywords: Externalities; General Welfare; Time Allocation and Labor Supply;

   JEL: J22 I31 D62

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umagsb:2015012&r=soc

6. Just Tell me What my Neighbors Do! Public Policies for Households Recycling

   Ankinée Kirakozian (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis)

   Christophe Charlier (University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France) 

An important stand of the economic literature focuses on how to provide the  right incentives for households to recycle their waste. This body of work  includes a growing number of studies inspired by psychology that seek to  explain waste sorting, and pro-environmental behavior more generally, and  highlight the importance of social approval and peer effect. The present  theoretical work explores this issue. We propose a model that considers  heterogeneous households that choose to recycle based on three main household characteristics: environmental preferences, opportunity cost of their tax  expenditure, and their self-image. The model is original in depicting the  interactions among households which enable them to form beliefs on recycling  and allows them to assess their self-image. These interaction are explored  through the model simulations. We point to how individual recycling decisions  depend on these interactions, and how the effectiveness of public policies  related to recycling is affected by a crowding-out effect. We consider three  complementary policies in the model simulations: provision of incentives to  recycle through taxation, provision of information on the importance of  selective sorting, and a 'localized' approach that takes the form of a  'nudge'. We use the results of the simulations to quantify the consequences  of the crowding out effect on total residual waste. This paper makes an  original contribution by showing that when the individual decision is  influenced by an internalized peer attention, beliefs about others' intrinsic  and extrinsic values can be more important than others' observed behaviors.

   Keywords: Household recycling, Waste, Environmental regulation, Behavioral

    economics, Computational Techniques

   JEL: D10 D03 Q53 Q58

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2015-20&r=soc

7. The influence of group identity on farmer’s decision making: an experimental economics approach on a family farming case in Costa Rica

   Schickramm, Lena

   Saenz-Segura, Fernando

   Schipper, Robert A.

   Handgraaf, Michel

A successful family farming sector is strategic for developing rural areas,  but is is endangered by household-specific market failures, high transaction  costs and low bargaining power. Contract farming and collective actions are  two common institutional devices for acquiring a level of certainty regarding  market information, delivery conditions and procurement prices. Farmers’ associations is one of the common form of collective actions, but faces  problems of opportunistic behaviour from their participating members. The  intensity of group identity felt by an individual member is an essential  determinant of the level of commitment and support granted towards the  association. This case study analyzes the interdependence between individual  identification intensity and revealed commitment for a commodity specific  association that is based on individual membership. Members and non-members  of the association participated in a questionnaire followed by a natural  field experiment concerning their social identity towards the existing pepper  association. By manipulating the social identity variable it could be seen  that social identity has an influence on the participation of the individual  in the association. This effect could be found for members and non-members  alike. Strengthened social identity generally increased the participation of  the individual in the organisation.

   Keywords: Collective actions, social identity, willingness to participate,

    pepper, Farm Management,

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aesc15:204235&r=soc

8. Grading Hampers Cooperative Information Sharing in Group Problem Solving

   Anne-Sophie Hayek

   Claudia Toma

   Dominique Oberlé

   Fabrizio Butera

We hypothesized that individual grading in group work, a widespread practice,  hampers information sharing in cooperative problem solving. Experiment 1  showed that a condition in which members’ individual contribution was  expected to be visible and graded, as in most graded work, led to less  pooling of relevant, unshared information and more pooling of less-relevant,  shared information than two control conditions where individual contribution  was not graded, but either visible or not. Experiment 2 conceptually  replicated this effect: Group members primed with grades pooled less of their  unshared information, but more of their shared information, compared to group  members primed with neutral concepts. Thus, grading can hinder cooperative  work and impair information sharing in groups.

   Keywords: information sharing; grades; hidden profiles; cooperation; mixed-motives

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/199362&r=soc

9. The effect of trust and risk perception on citizen's intention to adopt and use e-government services in Jordan.

   Adel Al Khattab (Al-Hussein Bin Talal University)

   Hasan Al-Shalabi (Al-Hussein Bin Talal University)

   Khamis Al-Khattab (Al-Hussein Bin Talal University)

   Mahmaod Al-Rawad (Al Hussain Bin Talal University)

Purpose: This study was undertaken with the primary aim of identifying,  examining and providing an understanding of the factors that could affect  citizens’ intention to adopt and use e-government services in Jordan.Design:

The preliminary research model used here has been developed from the  Technology Acceptance Model by incorporating additional constructs from other  models, namely, web trust and perceived risk. A self-administered  questionnaire was completed by the selected sample. The response rate of  59.2%. The data were analyzed using parametric statistics including ANOVA,  MANOVA, means analysis, and the t-test.Findings: The finding of this study  revealed that there are four main factors that affect citizen's intention to  engage in electronic government services; these are perceived ease of use,  perceived usefulness, perceived risk, and trust in electronic channels. The  findings have also revealed that the modified research model can explain 58.1  per cent of the variance in citizens' intention to adopt and use electronic  government services. Limitations/Implications: A practical implication of the  findings and conclusions of this study is that governments are urged to take  into account the importance of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use,  trust and perceived risk in influencing the intention of citizens to use  e-government services. This study also serves as a tool for understanding  user acceptance of Internet applications such as e-government technology.

Originality: This study is one of the first to provide important information  on factors affecting citizens intention to adopt and use electronic  government services in Jordan.

   Keywords: Jordan, electronic government, technology adoption and

    acceptance, Perceived Risk, trust.

   JEL: D80 O32

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:1003157&r=soc

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