Bounded Sociability and Internet Social Capital

In order to test the idea that trust is not a costless resource, available in a frictionless social environment, we have included Castelfranchi's concept of trust in the model we used to study the impact of the Internet on sociability (Mandelli, 2002). We report the most important findings from our study and elaborate on it, because they are relevant in order to help answer our research question about the role of trust in building social hierarchies.

We tested the idea that "trust builds trust," and were also interested in the role of cognitive resources (cognitive energy and time) in this dynamic. Our model rests on the awareness that cognitive and social resources are finite and their economies influence social investments and cooperation. Norris (2000b) suggests that social cooperation is influenced by the availability of cognitive resources (cognitive abilities and time) and by the perception of self-efficacy in social engagement.

In organizational settings, Adler and Kwon (2002) stated that social capital is influenced by opportunity, motivation and ability, and that structural connections (access) might be not enough for building social ties; they also require the availability of the relationship and the cognitive dimensions of social capital. This framework, applied to individual level phenomena, suggests considering the role of cultural and cognitive resources in the process. Motivation, social capital and cognitive resources have also proved important predictors of cooperation in virtual communities of individuals (Kollock & Smith, 1998).

This issue has long been studied by researchers interested in the effects of these new social aggregations on social engagement (Putnam, 2000; Norris, 2002). As research results (Norris, 2000) point out, there is a reinforcement effect in Internet sociability; usually actors who become more active on the web are the most active even offline. The others may be left out of the process. The reasons for this discouraging effect may be found in lack of:

• Commitment by the individuals;

• Individual cognitive resources (cognitive sophistication);

• Individual social resources (social capital) (Norris, 2000).

The economics of cognitive mediation suggest to pay attention not only to the net balance of the perceived benefits and costs in the cognitive exchanges (Simon, 1972; Neumann, 1991), but also to the stock of available cognitive and social resources. If they are not available, the individual actors or the policy-makers of the networks (the managers, if we are in a business setting) must invest in building them.

Applying this framework to individual relationships on the Internet (Figure 5), we hypothesized that in the digitally all-connected world, access to interactive communication and virtual community environments can foster the creation of social capital or destroy it, depending on the original set of cognitive, social and cultural resources available (for the operationalization of all the variables see Mandelli, 2002).

Figure 5: A Model of Trust and Social Capital Dynamics on the Internet (Mandelli, 2002)

Sociologists interested in Internet socialization processes helped highlight another important aspect of virtual social networking: the difference between bridging and bonding social ties. "Bridging social capital refers to social networks that bring together people of different sorts, and bonding social capital brings together people of a similar sort. This is an important distinction because the externalities of groups that are bridging are likely to be positive, while networks that are bonding (limited within particular social niches) are at greater risk of producing externalities that are negative" (Putnam, 2000).

Also Fukuyama (1995), applying the same concept to organizational coordination, claims that only trust toward the world outside the family fosters innovation and development, while the familistic culture hinders the ability to extend the richness and diversity of one's social networks. In a world where innovation and learning make the competitive difference (Vicari, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Rullani & Vicari, 1999), social networks of independent firms are seen as the fittest coordination model (McEvily & Zaheer, 1999).

An interesting research question regards the impact of the diffusion of network-based technologies on these trends. At the individual level, there is the risk that virtual communities lead more toward bonding sociability, and impede bridging possibilities, because they connect people with the same interests and lifestyles (Stolle, 1998; Preece, 1999). The Net may consume trust, rather than produce it, according to Uslaner (2000). In fact the Internet makes people connect more with family members, friends and people with the same interests, than strangers (Cole, 2001). This is consistent with the so-called balkanization hypothesis, developed by Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson (1997) who suggested to "... examine critically the claim that a global village is the inexorable result of increased connectivity." Their conclusion comes from the analysis of the constraints posed by limits of what is known as bounded rationality by Simon (1959): "... even in a lifetime, few people have significant relationships with more than a few thousand others. As long as human information processing capabilities are bounded, electronic media are unlikely to dramatically change this total" (Van Alstyne & Brynjolfsson 1997, pp. 3–4). Contrary to the simple equation between trust and networks, the balkanization hypothesis envisions a networked world where bonding ties (ties with similar people) will hamper cooperation and in which variety and innovation at the system level will be lost. We also included this hypothesized link in our model (Figure 5).

We tested whether values, individual happiness, cognitive resources, time, trust in people online, trust in Internet communication environments, and access to people's social network through the Internet influence people's use of the communication cooperative applications on the Internet (e-mail, chats and virtual communities). Then we tested if all these variables, and bonding offline social capital (relationships with family and friends) influenced changes in the number of regular relationships on the Internet. The data were elaborated using multivariate regression statistical analysis, organized in a path-analysis sequence. The results confirmed the model hypothesized, but for the direct influence of time constraint on sociability behavior ^[8]. Figure 6 represents the synthesis of the regression paths, which describe the most relevant regression relationships found (see the methodological appendix in Mandelli, 2002 for the statistical coefficients and levels of significance).

Figure 6: Empirical Results on Trust and Social Capital Dynamics on the Internet (Mandelli, 2002)

The use of the interpersonal communication environments of the Internet (virtual communities and chats) can drive the creation of both bonding (within the community) and bridging (out-of-the community) social capital. Using email and group communication, people can foster relationships with family and friends — but also with people they have never met before (new friends online). Also the path-dependent nature of the social capital building process is confirmed. There is a reinforcing link between offline and online social capital. People who have stronger ties with family members and friends are more likely to increase their regular contacts with them after they start using the Internet. But they do it, of course, if they can access them through e-mail and other interpersonal communication tools of the web. The digital access divide may drive a social divide.

Using chatrooms and virtual communities, people can make new friends. But not everybody uses these collaborative applications. The use of these communication formats (and the consequent effect on regular relationships) is mediated by age and internal trust (trust in the people they are going to interact with), that is, people who think that is easier to meet other people online than in face-to-face are more likely to use the synchronous communication environments of the Internet (chat) and make friends online. Results also confirmed the link between internal and external trust. External trust (here operationalized as trust in the Internet community environments) helps create trust in online people.

Even though time stress showed no relationship with sociability outcomes, the data supported the hypothesis that the availability of cognitive and intangible resources influences cooperation behavior and sociability phenomena. There was a significant relation between the increase in the number of regular contacts with people with the same hobbies, the same religious interests and the same political interests, and the decrease in the number of regular contacts with other social groups. This, which we call a switching bonding ties effect, seems to capture the adaptation to social changes predicted by the balkanization hypothesis reviewed above, which predicts that the scarcity of intangible resources and the increased access to people with similar interests drive the reduction of ties with other social groups.

In short, our study found that the Internet can foster or harm certain categories of social relationships, and therefore can have both positive and negative effects on the construction of social capital, depending on specific personal and social pre-conditions. Our finding links the risk of increased society fragmentation not to alienation effects of the Internet, but instead to those adaptive and evolutionary selection effects necessary for managing the economics of cognitive and time-based costs of relationships in complex interconnected social networks.

Also, culture matters. In our study Italian southern local culture explained different important results concerned with Internet sociability. Time dedicated to chatting was predicted by southern residence (also by younger age, lower education, lack of family bonding ties, Internet civic self-confidence and internal trust). Also the decrease in the number of regular contacts with family and friends was linked to local residence. This negative sociability result was influenced by lack of Internet connections of people's family and friends. This is a confirmation of the idea that the first dimension of digital divide (the differential Internet connectedness of people) has consequences on the other dimensions of network connection. We found evidence for the idea that:

• Trust is a dynamic process (trust builds trust);

• The formation of trust is constrained by the stock of available cognitive and social resources;

• The formation of trust is embedded in local culture.

Thus, there seems to be a virtuous circle driving cooperation and the creation of new social capital in complex social networks — which describes the adaptive interplay among the stock of social, technological and cognitive resources with civic engagement, and which may also explain culturallyinfluenced Internet social effects. But this virtuous circle can become vicious, when there is a gap or an instrumental/economic imbalance of social, technological, and cognitive resources at the individual relationship level.

Our conclusion from these results is that Internet users, as all citizens, have access to a new environment for socializing and cooperation. Confirming its mass media social function (Morris & Ogan, 1995), the Internet is not neutral: it opens new, plural, parallel and also conflictual social possible designs of our individual and system-level life because it changes the potential structures of interpretations of the world and cooperative activities. It changes the transaction costs of relationships (the instrumental and not instrumental costs for social encounters on the complex interconnected network) in a complex, not linear way, and it influences the stock of our social and cognitive resources. The outcome is neither simple nor unidirectional, contrary to what was promised by the information symmetry hypothesis on Internet diffusion.

^[8]We believe that the influence of time constraint might have not been captured by the operationalization of this concept in our model (answer to the question: "Do you feel busier than the average person?"). Further research on this issue is needed.