Year: 2011
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Facebook Marketplace ("Marketplace") links buyers and sellers in peer to peer based commercial transactions by embedding transactions in a social circle.The feature of mutual friend informs the seller if the potential buyer and seller have any common Facebook "friends."Based on a heuristic-systematic model of information processing, we theorize the sellers can apply the mutual friend feature as a heuristic cue, promoting heuristic processing, and influencing social judgments and attitudes.But what are the implications of the heuristic cue to the systemic processing of content on Facebook?How does greater information access to Facebook profile, wall, and photos attenuate the effect of mutual friend on content evaluation?The survey data was collected from one U.S. Southwestern region involving sellers who had posted listings on Marketplace.The study examined the seller evaluation of buyer content on Facebook and found biased effects of heuristic processing on systematic processing.With profile access, the bias effect of heuristic processing on systematic processing was attenuated.The findings have practical implications on how technical features of social networking sites can affect human information processing through various bias and attenuation effects.
Authors: Sirkka L. Järvenpää, Zuhair Khan
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W749626143