[Network Seminar] First Network Seminar in 2020, note the change of date!
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Marc Santolini
Jan 22, 2020, 8:44:52 PM1/22/20
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Dear all
We wish you a happy, network-y twenty twenty!
This year, we will have a special network seminar to begin the year, with Christos Nicolaides from University of Cyprus (UCY) coming to CRI on Monday 3rd February at 11:30am, in the learning center extension (ground floor). This event is exceptionnally merged with the CRI Research Seminar.
Title: Social Influence and Habits in Exercise: A Field Experiment
Summary: In this work, we leverage the rich communication patterns between individuals of a global exercise network to elucidate the role of social contagion in perturbing habitual and non-habitual individual’s fitness behavior. To identify the causal effect of social influence, we designed and conducted a six-month long randomized field experiment involving 1.3M users of an online fitness tracker platform. We find that a single exposure to peer's fitness activity increases the probability of exercising by ~1%. We further detect experimental evidence that habitual individuals -- identified by the predictability (entropy) of their fitness activity -- are less susceptible to peer effects. This supports the hypothesis that habitual individuals are less responsive to motivational signals. The methods and results can enable the design of more effective health-promoting strategies and social policy built around new scientific knowledge on the causal effect of social influence in promoting healthy behavior.
Summary: In this work, we leverage the rich communication patterns between individuals of a global exercise network to elucidate the role of social contagion in perturbing habitual and non-habitual individual’s fitness behavior. To identify the causal effect of social influence, we designed and conducted a six-month long randomized field experiment involving 1.3M users of an online fitness tracker platform. We find that a single exposure to peer's fitness activity increases the probability of exercising by ~1%. We further detect experimental evidence that habitual individuals -- identified by the predictability (entropy) of their fitness activity -- are less susceptible to peer effects. This supports the hypothesis that habitual individuals are less responsive to motivational signals. The methods and results can enable the design of more effective health-promoting strategies and social policy built around new scientific knowledge on the causal effect of social influence in promoting healthy behavior.
Bio: Christos Nicolaides is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and a Lecturer (US equivalent of tenure-track Assistant Professor) at the Department of Business and Public Administration at University of Cyprus (UCY). He has also a second research appointment as a Digital Fellow at the Initiative on the Digital Economy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before joining UCY, Christos spent three years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management funded by the James McDonnell Foundation. He has a PhD in Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MSc in Applied Mathematics from Imperial College London and BSc in Physics from University of Thessaloniki. His research focus on applying mathematical, statistical and computational tools to large-scale empirical and data driven research questions with applications in identification of social influence that is mediated, amplified, or directed by interactive technologies. He has worked closely with global firms on realizing business value from social media and information technology investments. Christos’ research developments have been published in major scientific journals including Nature Communications and Journal of the Royal Society Interface and have been featured at prestigious news outlets including New York Times, CNN and Los Angeles Times. He is principal institutional investigator in research projects funded by European Commission, industry (e.g., SMIXIN Inc) and the Cyprus Ministry of Health. Christos has totally attracted more than 850,000 euros in research funding for his institution.
Cheers,
Liubov and Marc
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