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Computational Approaches to Studying the Co-evolution of Networks and Behaviour in Social Dilemmas shows students, researchers, and professionals how to use computation methods, rather than mathematical analysis, to answer research questions for an easier, more productive method of testing their models. Illustrations of general methodology are provided and explore how computer simulation is used to bridge the gap between formal theoretical models and empirical applications.

"Computational Approaches to Studying the Co-evolution of Networks and Behaviour in Social Dilemmas shows students, researchers, and professionals how to use computation methods, rather than mathematical analysis, to answer research questions for an easier, more productive method of testing their models. Illustrations of general methodology are provided and explore how computer simulation is used to bridge the gap between formal theoretical models and empirical applications. An accompanying website supports the text"--

Abstract
A cohesive network keeps groups together and enables members to communicate about and cooperate for public goods. For ongoing cooperation, group members have to know if their group members cooperate or defect, but this information—mostly through gossip—is threatened by noise and biases. If there are redundant information channels, however, errors in monitoring and transmission in one imperfect channel can, to some degree, be corrected by information through another imperfect channel, and may lead to higher levels of cooperation. An influential conceptualization of social cohesion based on redundancy is K-connectivity: the minimum number (K) of node-independent paths connecting pairs of nodes in a group's network. In a lab experiment, we tested if higher K-connectivity yields higher levels of cooperation for public goods, controlling for a number of other network effects such as density, size, and average distance. We do not find the hypothesized effect, which might be due to a not-earlier-found shortcoming of the concept, and we propose a solution.

The growth of the sharing economy has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. These online platforms bring together individuals willing to share and those who are in need. While sharing in some of these platforms is reciprocated by money or reputation, some platforms rely heavily on individuals' good will to give their things away with no personal benefit. Why do individuals cooperate in environments where there is every incentive to free-ride instead? In this article, we examine several explanations for such peculiar behavior – namely, the hypothesis that prosocial or sharing behavior spreads from person to person, and social learning hypothesis, which tells that such behavior could be based on mimicking others. We test these hypotheses using longitudinal data from a freecycling group on Facebook with 4818 members. The group is made for people to give things away for free, thus making the group vulnerable to free-riding behavior. We find that individuals who are more active receivers are also more likely to share something with group members in the future. We also find some evidence of a positive effect of social learning on sharing behavior.

The problem of cooperation and social order is one of the core issues in the social sciences. The key question is how humans, groups, institutions, and countries can avoid or overcome the collective good dilemmas that could lead to a Hobbesian war of all against all. Using the general set of social dilemmas as a paradigmatic example, rigorous formal analysis can stimulate scientific progress in several ways. The book, consisting of original articles, provides state of the art examples of research along these lines: theoretical, experimental, and field studies on trust and cooperation. The theoretical work covers articles on trust and control, reputation formation, and paradigmatic articles on the benefits and caveats of abstracting reality into models. The experimental articles treat lab based tests of models of trust and reputation, and the effects of the social and institutional embeddedness on behavior in cooperative interactions and possibly emerging inequalities. The field studies test these models in applied settings such as cooperation between organizations, informal care, and different kinds of collaboration networks. The book will be exemplary for rigorous sociology and social sciences more in general in a variety of ways: There is a focus on effects of social conditions, in particular different forms of social and institutional embeddedness, on social outcomes. Theorizing about and testing of effects of social contexts on individual and group outcomes is one of the main aims of sociological research. Modelling efforts include formal explications of micro-macro links that are typically easily overlooked when argumentation is intuitive and impressionistic Extensive attention is paid to unintended effects of intentional behavior, another feature that is a direct consequence of formal theoretical modelling and in-depth data-analyses of the social processes

The book identifies conditions for trust and cooperation. It highlights unintended consequences of individually rational behavior, and shows how trust and cooperation change dependent on social embeddedness. Such analyses inspire experimental tests in lab conditions, but also tests through empirical applications in field studies. The results of this mixed-method approach can in turn be used to inspire further theoretical work.

Large-scale online marketplace data have been repeatedly used to test sociological theories on trust between strangers. Most studies focus on sellers' aggregate reputation scores, rather than on buyers' individual decisions to trust. Theoretical predictions on how repeated exchanges affect trust within dyads and how buyers weigh individual experience against reputation feedback from other actors have not been tested directly in detail. What do buyers do when they are warned not to trust someone they have trusted many times before? We analyze reputation effects on trust at the dyadic and network levels using data from an illegal online drug marketplace. We find that buyers' trust decisions are primarily explained by dyadic embeddedness - cooperative sellers get awarded by repeated exchanges. Although buyers take third-party information into account, this effect is weaker and more important for first-time buyers. Buyers tend to choose market exit instead of retaliation against sellers after negative experiences.

Societies are sometimes divided into groups that behave in different ways or have strongly opposing opinions. At other times, everyone seems to behave according to similar principles and opinions. It is likely that individual decisions on behavior or opinions are affected by social networks through influence and selection processes. However, the outcomes are not necessarily optimal for the society as a whole. Two types of problems might arise: (a) polarization of the society into two camps that do not reach consensus, possibly leading to conflict; (b) actors choosing suboptimal behavior, because changing behavior is too risky if done unilaterally. Simulations show that if a society is rather segregated initially, there exists a heightened probability that this situation will worsen. The effect of network density is twofold. First, density has a positive effect on reaching a uniform opinion and, therefore, decreases the likelihood of polarization. Second, density increases the likelihood that actors do not change their behavior, worsening the inefficiency of already suboptimal initial situations.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- 1. Complementary Studies on Trust and Cooperation in Social Settings: An Introduction -- 2. Institutional Design and Human Motivation: The Role of Homo Economicus Assumptions -- 3. Rational Choice Theory, the Model of Frame Selection and Other Dual-Process Theories. A Critical Comparison -- 4. Too Simple Models in Sociology: The Case of Exchange -- 5. Rational Exploitation of the Core by the Periphery? On the Collective (In)efficiency of Endogenous Enforcement of Universal Conditional Cooperation in a Core-Periphery Network -- 6. Reputation Effects, Embeddedness, and Granovetter's Error -- 7. Robustness of Reputation Cascades -- 8. Organized Distrust: If it is there and that Effective, Why Three Recent Scandals? -- 9. Polarization and Radicalization in the Bounded Confidence Model: A Computer-Aided Speculation -- 10. Local Brokerage Positions and Access to Unique Information -- 11. Who Gets How Much in Which Relation? A Flexible Theory of Profit Splits in Networks and its Application to Complex Structures -- 12. Social Identity and Social Value Orientations -- 13. Does Money Change Everything? Priming Experiments in Situations of Strategic Interaction -- 14. Social Norms and Commitments in Cooperatives – Experimental Evidence -- 15. Rational Choice or Framing? Two Approaches to Explain the Patterns in the Fehr-Gächter-Experiments on Cooperation and Punishment in the Contribution to Public Goods -- 16. Maverick: Experimentally Testing a Conjecture of the Antitrust Authorities -- 17. Cooperation, Reputation Effects, and Network Dynamics: Experimental Evidence -- 18. Comparing Consequences of Carrots and Sticks on Cooperation in Repeated Public Good Games -- 19. A Sociological View on Hierarchical Failure: The Effect of Organizational Rules on Exchange Performance in Buyer- Supplier Transactions -- 20. Organizational Innovativeness Through Inter-Organizational Ties -- 21. A Transaction Cost Approach to Informal Care -- 22. Trust is Good – Or is Control Better? Trust and Informal Control in Dutch Neighborhoods – Their Association and Consequences -- 23. Religious Diversity and Social Cohesion in German Classrooms: A Micro-Macro Study Based on Empirical Simulations -- Notes on the Editors and Contributors

We study what determines whether someone is an early Facebook adopter in a context in which Facebook is still relatively new compared to a far more popular Dutch social networking site (SNS) (Hyves). We use representative survey data of 4363 adolescents aged 14–15 years. First, adolescents who participate in more leisure activities, who have more digital resources, and who have more friends who are SNS members are more likely to be SNS members. Second, we hypothesize and show that for adopting communication technology that highly fluctuates in popularity and is highly time-dependent, individuals are more likely to be early Facebook adopters when the number of their friends who are Facebook members increases. Finally, non-native adolescents are also more likely to be early Facebook adopters.