Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps

Facebook and Outlook have been popular choices for arranging physical attendance of social and business events, with clear advantages emphasised in existing literature, but not free of imperfections. Empirical literature has detected evidence of interdependence among users of these platforms; howeve...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Inchauspe, Julian
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Nature 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/85746
_version_ 1848764768548028416
author Inchauspe, Julian
author_facet Inchauspe, Julian
author_sort Inchauspe, Julian
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Facebook and Outlook have been popular choices for arranging physical attendance of social and business events, with clear advantages emphasised in existing literature, but not free of imperfections. Empirical literature has detected evidence of interdependence among users of these platforms; however, their implications for the possibility of herding traps have been unnoticed. This paper contributes with an original theory that demonstrates that no-attendance or low-attendance traps are a necessary and unavoidable outcome under conditions identified in empirical literature for some events—i.e. events subject to what I call ‘social participation constraints’. The main result is that some potentially desirable meetings are most likely failing to materialise due to the very design of the digital tools. Solutions are proposed to improve their designs to optimise users’ experience. Understanding the mechanism driving herding dynamics and traps that may cause digital tools to fail under interdependence should be of fundamental importance to software designers. This paper offers an accessible, self-contained, compact collection of key results that designers of social media tools and apps can use to enhance users’ experience. It can also be used to enhance business practices that apply to social media environments.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T11:24:36Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-85746
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
language English
last_indexed 2025-11-14T11:24:36Z
publishDate 2021
publisher Springer Nature
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-857462021-11-26T07:38:15Z Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps Inchauspe, Julian Social Sciences Economics Business & Economics Social media Traps Coordination Herding Apps SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook and Outlook have been popular choices for arranging physical attendance of social and business events, with clear advantages emphasised in existing literature, but not free of imperfections. Empirical literature has detected evidence of interdependence among users of these platforms; however, their implications for the possibility of herding traps have been unnoticed. This paper contributes with an original theory that demonstrates that no-attendance or low-attendance traps are a necessary and unavoidable outcome under conditions identified in empirical literature for some events—i.e. events subject to what I call ‘social participation constraints’. The main result is that some potentially desirable meetings are most likely failing to materialise due to the very design of the digital tools. Solutions are proposed to improve their designs to optimise users’ experience. Understanding the mechanism driving herding dynamics and traps that may cause digital tools to fail under interdependence should be of fundamental importance to software designers. This paper offers an accessible, self-contained, compact collection of key results that designers of social media tools and apps can use to enhance users’ experience. It can also be used to enhance business practices that apply to social media environments. 2021 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/85746 10.1007/s11403-021-00329-2 English Springer Nature restricted
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Economics
Business & Economics
Social media
Traps
Coordination
Herding
Apps
SOCIAL MEDIA
Inchauspe, Julian
Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps
title Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps
title_full Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps
title_fullStr Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps
title_full_unstemmed Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps
title_short Modelling Facebook and Outlook Event Attendance Decisions Herding and Coordination Traps
title_sort modelling facebook and outlook event attendance decisions herding and coordination traps
topic Social Sciences
Economics
Business & Economics
Social media
Traps
Coordination
Herding
Apps
SOCIAL MEDIA
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/85746