Social Influence and Reciprocity in Online Gift Giving
Name
12423357_160080064626552_365211832366923776_n.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
885.94 KB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
769c2731ce6dd2b9d24c16a88ec2ab4e
Author(s)
Kizilcec, René F.
Bakshy, Eytan
Eckles, Dean Griffin
Burke, Moira
Date Issued
April 2018
Journal
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Citation
2018. "Social Influence and Reciprocity in Online Gift Giving." Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, 2018-April.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Giving gifts is a fundamental part of human relationships that is being affected by technology. The Internet enables people to give at the last minute and over long distances, and to observe friends giving and receiving gifts. How online gift giving spreads in social networks is therefore important to understand. We examine 1.5 million gift exchanges on Facebook and show that receiving a gift causes individuals to be 56% more likely to give a gift in the future. Additional surveys show that online gift giving was more socially acceptable to those who learned about it by observing friends' participation instead of a non-social encouragement. Most receivers pay the gift forward instead of reciprocating directly online, although surveys revealed additional instances of direct reciprocity, where the initial gifting occurred offline. Thus, social influence promotes the spread of online gifting, which both complements and substitutes for offline gifting.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173700
