Impact of heterogeneity and socioeconomic factors on individual behavior in decentralized sharing ecosystems

Autor: Guimerà, R., Duch, J., Amaral, L.A.N., Bustamante, F.E., Sánchez, M.A., Otto, J.S., Choffnes, D.R., Gavaldà-Miralles, A.
Přispěvatelé: Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
Rok vydání: 2014
Předmět:
Zdroj: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Repositori Institucional de la Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Universitat Rovira i virgili (URV)
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1309389111
Popis: 10.1073/pnas.1309389111 Tens of millions of individuals around the world use decentralized content distribution systems, a fact of growing social, economic, and technological importance. These sharing systems are poorly understood because, unlike in other technosocial systems, it is difficult to gather large-scale data about user behavior. Here, we investigate user activity patterns and the socioeconomic factors that could explain the behavior. Our analysis reveals that (i) the ecosystem is heterogeneous at several levels: content types are heterogeneous, users specialize in a few content types, and countries are heterogeneous in user profiles; and (ii) there is a strong correlation between socioeconomic indicators of a country and users behavior. Our findings open a research area on the dynamics of decentralized sharing ecosystems and the socioeconomic factors affecting them, and may have implications for the design of algorithms and for policymaking.
Databáze: OpenAIRE