Relationship Between Online and Offline Social Capital: Evidence from a Social Network Site in China

This study explores the impact of Social Network Sites (SNSs) usage on the formation of online bridging and bonding social capital, and the relationship between online and offline social capital. It is hypothesized that use of SNSs forms online social capital and online and offline social capital are positively correlated. A Chinese SNS, Renren, is studied specifically. Social capital scales and personality measures were adapted from existing literature to develop a questionnaire and a survey of 183 students was conducted in a university in China. Regression analyses suggest a strong positive relation between use of SNSs and online bridging social capital. Online social capital is demonstrated to be positively correlated with offline social capital. User extraversion is shown to predict certain use behaviors but its interaction effect with SNSs usage is not significant. Discussions about the theoretical and practical implications of the findings are provided

Toward a Comprehensive Understanding of User-Generated Content and Engagement Behavior on Facebook Business Pages

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2018. Major: Business Administration. Advisors: Yuqing Ren, Gediminas Adomavicius. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 196 pages.Social media platforms such as Facebook empower individual users to interact with companies and with each other on company-managed business pages. Users can generate content by posting directly to the business pages, and other users can engage with the content through multiple engagement features. Although such user-generated content (UGC in short) and associated engagement behaviors bear important consequences to the companies, they are not well understood. The three essays of my dissertation fill in this gap, by analyzing data collected from Facebook business pages with multiple empirical methods. The first essay examines the valence and content characteristics of user-generated posts on the Facebook business pages of multiple large companies across key consumer-oriented industries. It demonstrates that user posts on Facebook business pages represent a new form of UGC that is distinct from online product reviews generated by consumers, in terms of valence distribution and content types. Further, it highlights the important valence and content factors that influence two canonical types of engagement activities, i.e., liking and commenting. The second essay discusses how user engagement behaviors are shaped by engagement features on Facebook, and in particular, how the introduction of a new engagement feature affects the usage of existing features as well as overall engagement activities. It aims to uncover new insights regarding the interplay of multiple engagement features. Analyses show that, despite distinct functionalities, the usage of different features is not independent, and user posts that have received engagement are likely to obtain even more engagement of various types. The third essay addresses a methodological challenge of studying UGC on social media or other online contexts, where researchers frequently seek to combine data mining with econometric modeling, but ignore the issue of measurement error and misclassification. Findings of my dissertation advance understanding of UGC and engagement behavior on social media brand pages, and have practical implications for social media platforms as well as businesses that have presence on these platforms

The Effect of Peer-to-Peer Tangible Donation on Users’ Engagement in Online Community Platform

Despite the potential value of prosocial activities in enhancing user engagement in online communities, research on the relationship between prosocial activities and online community users’ behavior. In this research, we examine the impact of tangible donation on online community users’ engagement behaviors by using dataset from Reddit, a major online community platform. Our results indicate that, after donating, givers increase their engagement behavior by writing more posts and comments than non-givers. Furthermore, after receiving donation, receivers reduce their engagement behavior by writing fewer posts and comments than non-receivers. Our study serves as one of the first attempts to examine the role of peer-to-peer tangible donation in users’ engagement behavior in online community platform, which is a novel way to help people in needs and effective way to induce user participation

Designing Real-Time Feedback for Bidders in Homogeneous-Item Continuous Combinatorial Auctions

Although combinatorial auctions are important mechanisms for many specialized applications, their adoption in general-purpose marketplaces is still fairly limited, partly due to the inherent difficulty in evaluating the efficacy of bids without the availability of comprehensive bidder support. In this paper, we present both theo-retical results and computational designs to support real-time feedback to bidders in continuous combinatorial auctions, where bidders are free to join and leave the auction at any time. In particular, we focus on the broad class of single-item multi-unit (SIMU) combinatorial auctions, where multiple identical units of one homogenous item are being auctioned. We also consider two common ways to express bidding preferences: OR bids and XOR bids. For SIMU auctions with each of the two bid types, we present comprehensive analyses of auction dynamics, which can determine winning bids that satisfy allocative fairness, and compute critical evaluative metrics needed to provide bidder support, including bid winning and deadness levels. We also design the data structures and algorithms needed to provide bidder support in real time for SIMU auctions of practically relevant sizes. The computational tools proposed in this paper can facilitate the efficient and more transparent implementation of SIMU combinatorial auctions in business- and consumer-oriented markets

A facile method to fabricate the durable and self-protective coating for marine applications

Endowing coatings with effective protective function for metal substrates is of great interest. An excellent example is slippery liquid infused surface (SLIS) which possesses potential applications owing to its unique liquid repellency and self-cleaning properties. However, their widespread applications are facing obstacles of complex preparation, poor protection and low durability. Herein, a facile and efficient liquid infusion method was proposed to construct SLIS by altering the heterogeneous microstructure on the SiOx layer of the coatings with direct UV irradiation. The coatings were fabricated by conducting an appropriate UV irradiation treatment on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film infused with methyl oleate (MO). The as-prepared transparent anti-fouling coatings showed outstanding anti-fouling properties against various contaminants such as algal (Chlorella), sand, rust (Fe2O3), paints (both water-based and oil-based) and daily life liquid pollutants (e.g., water, coffee, cola, soy sauce and milk). In addition, results revealed that the coatings exhibited a prominent anti-corrosion performance. Moreover, the coatings had excellent mechanical, chemical and thermal durability regarding the great repellency of the pollutants. We proposed this synergistic strategy between lubricant infusion and coating heterogeneous microstructure to widen new possibilities for fabricating coatings with promissing anti-corrosive and anti-fouling functionality