Many companies create and manage communities where consumers observe and exchange information about the effort exerted by other consumers. Such communities are especially popular in the areas of fitness, education, dieting, and financial savings. We study how to optimally structure such consumer communities when the objective is to maximize the total or average amount of effort expended. Using network modeling and assuming peer influence through conformity, we find that the optimal community design consists of a set of disconnected or very loosely connected sub-communities, each of which is very densely connected within. Also, each sub-community in the optimal design consists of consumers selected such that their “standalone” propensity to exert effort correlates negatively with their propensity to conform and correlates positively with their propensity to influence others.

中文翻译：

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社交网络设计引人入胜

许多公司创建和管理社区，在该社区中，消费者可以观察并交换有关其他消费者所付出努力的信息。这样的社区在健身，教育，饮食和经济储蓄等领域特别受欢迎。我们研究如何在目标是最大程度地花费总支出或平均支出时，如何优化此类消费者社区的结构。通过使用网络建模并通过一致性假设对等方的影响，我们发现最佳社区设计由一组相互断开或非常松散的子社区组成，每个子社区都紧密地连接在一起。也，