Eliciting Social Networks: An Experimental Approach

Abstract

This work presents the design of a mechanism to elicit latent social networks. Subjects are invited to reveal their friends’ names, together with a “strength” (from acquaintance to friend) measuring the valuation of the relationship. According to the mechanism, subjects are rewarded with a fixed price either a) if the strengths of a randomly selected mutual link are sufficiently close or b) if they do not nominate anybody (our “exit-option” close). Our main results are that i) a very large percentage of links (72%) are reciprocated (99% of those with the required accuracy); ii) the mechanism largely captures strong friendship relations and practically ignores weak relations and iii) the accuracy of the elicitation mechanism is robust to the different reward means.