Experimental Design
To examine the effect of images signaling different personality traits on the formation of personal social networks, we use four fictitious Instagram profiles. These profiles were created for a randomized controlled trial (AEARCTR-0012473) that conducts a correspondence test in the shared housing market. The study aims to investigate the effect of personality traits signaled by images on social media profiles on the callback rate for room ads in shared apartments. The social media profiles include photos that signal high (low) conscientiousness and high (low) agreeableness/low (high) neuroticism (treatment images), as well as general non-personality specific images. The present study aims to measure the rate of acceptance of friend/follower requests on social networking sites using these fictitious profiles. The study will use the 'discover friends' suggestions made by the SNS. We collect friend/contact suggestions from the social networking site (180 to 325 per profile) and send a request to follow these profiles. These suggestions are primarily based on existing networks, resulting in a subject pool of students that closely resembles the subject pool of the RCT (AEARCTR-0012473). In cases where a subject is suggested more than once, we randomly select one of the corresponding profiles to send a friend/follow request to the respective user. Data is collected on the decision of subjects regarding contact requests, including accept, decline (in case of private profiles), or re-follow (in case of private and/or public profiles). Additionally, we collect data on the degree of connection between a person and our profiles, as measured by the number of connections with a suggested profile. Furthermore, we collect publicly available data on target profiles, such as gender, number of contacts, posts, and biographical information.
Note that for the original randomized field experiment (AEARCTR-0012473), which uses the same information as this follow-up study, IRB approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen (A2.5.4-133_aa, 2020-09-05). No new ethical issues are raised in the present project compared to the original field experiment, therefore a new ethics application was not submitted.