Facebook Friends as Social Capital - How Will They Respond to the Normative Request?

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to test how social norms function online. In this experiment, the value of Facebook friends as social capital was measured by an actual amount of support received from them, and this evaluation is based on Bourdieus (1986) theory on social capital, which insists that the social capital needs to be helpful in promoting ones intentional or purposeful action. Results suggest that people asked with strong provincial norms spend more time and energy fulfilling online requests than those asked without norms. The degree to which people are fulfilling online requests was also affected by tie strength, perceived level of reciprocity between sender and receiver, and receivers level of altruism. However, online helping behavior was not associated with support type - the provision of either pro-social or instrumental support.