Social Net Work Analysis of gifting bear bile in Viet Nam

The illegal wildlife trade is the major cause for global loss of diversity. In Southeast Asia regions and particularly in Vietnam, the consumption of wildlife products is mostly driven by the demand for food and traditional medicinal products. However, consumers’ motivations are poorly understood. In this study, we use mixed social science approaches and social network analysis to understand the social network influence on the consumption of bear bile through gift-giving practices in Hanoi and Nghe An. The study also provides a deeper understanding of how bear bile is consumed as gifts and the current information on bear bile usage. We found that 97.5% of all interviewees have given or received bear bile and the most common occasion for gift-giving is during visits between closed social circles of family and friends. Other reasons for giving bear bile include illnesses, gratitude, drinking among males, and ulterior motives.

“When I Heard the Word Palliative”: Obscuring and Clarifying Factors Affecting the Stigma Around Palliative Care Referral in Oncology

PURPOSE Palliative care (PC) can help patients with cancer manage symptoms and achieve a greater quality of life. However, there are many barriers to patients with cancer receiving referrals to PC, including the stigmatizing association of PC with end of life. This study explores factors that obscure or clarify the stigma around PC referrals and its associations with end of life in cancer care. METHODS A qualitative descriptive design using grounded theory components was designed to investigate barriers to PC referrals for patients receiving treatment at an outpatient cancer center. Interviews with patients, caregivers, and oncology professionals were audio-recorded, transcribed, and independently coded by three investigators to ensure rigor. Participants were asked about their perceptions of PC and PC referral experiences. RESULTS Interviews with 44 participants revealed both obscuring and clarifying factors surrounding the association of PC as end of life. Prognostic uncertainty, confusion about PC's role, and social network influence all perpetuated an inaccurate and stigmatizing association of PC with end of life. Contrarily, familiarity with PC, prognostic confidence, and clear referral communication helped delineate PC as distinct from end of life. CONCLUSION To reduce the stigmatizing association of PC with end of life, referring clinicians should clearly communicate prognosis, PC's role, and the reason for referral within the context of each patient and his or her unique cancer trajectory. The oncology team plays a vital role in framing the messaging surrounding referrals to PC.

Conceptual Model on Internet Banking Acceptance in China with Social Network Influence

The Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 is changing the way we live including Internet Banking. Although, the government has been encouraging, the acceptance of internet banking is still not well received by Chinese customers. The reason is because they are more concerned about the economic development on the banking industry, and less concerned about technology acceptance and its development. This lack of acceptance is also attributed to the current lack of social network influence to internet banking which including its weak compliance, lack of identification, and lack of internalization. This paper aims to identify the factors that may be influencing IB acceptance by proposing a model which can determine customer’s behavioural intention based on social network influence. The TAM, UTAUT and the Social Influence Theory (SIT) were simultaneously adopted for this study. It is to use the TAM model’s perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, the UTAUT model’s social influence, and the SIT’s compliance, identification and internalization factor for the analysis. For this purpose, a preliminary study was first administered so as to identify customers’ attitude of the IB acceptance. Thirty respondents were recruited for a structured interview. The behavioural intention and social network influence on internet banking in China was then examined with the proposed model. It appears that the model can be used to forecast Chinese customers’ acceptance of internet banking. It will give benefits to bank and society on paying attention to the influence of social network for internet banking in China.

A comparison of dyadic and social network assessments of peer influence

The present study compares two methods for assessing peer influence: the longitudinal actor–partner interdependence model (L-APIM) and the longitudinal social network analysis (L-SNA) Model. The data were drawn from 1,995 (49% girls and 51% boys) third grade students ( M age = 9.68 years). From this sample, L-APIM ( n = 206 indistinguishable dyads and n = 187 distinguishable dyads) and L-SNA ( n = 1,024 total network members) subsamples were created. Students completed peer nominations and objective assessments of mathematical reasoning in the spring of the third and fourth grades. Patterns of statistical significance differed across analyses. Stable distinguishable and indistinguishable L-APIM dyadic analyses identified reciprocated friend influence such that friends with similar levels of mathematical reasoning influenced one another and friends with higher math reasoning influenced friends with lower math reasoning. L-SNA models with an influence parameter (i.e., average reciprocated alter) comparable to that assessed in L-APIM analyses failed to detect influence effects. Influence effects did emerge, however, with the addition of another, different social network influence parameter (i.e., average alter influence effect). The diverging results may be attributed to differences in the sensitivity of the analyses, their ability to account for structural confounds with selection and influence, the samples included in the analyses, and the relative strength of influence in reciprocated best as opposed to other friendships.

Education and inequality in employment in China and Japan in 2000s: a social network perspective

PurposeThis paper attempts to discover whether or not social networks work in the same way in different sectors of the labour market in the same society, using data from the 2008 Asian Social Survey. Labour markets in some societies are segmented; there are two segments in the labour market, namely, the core sector and the peripheral sector. The practices of each sector differs from the others. Some sectors employ CME labour markets, while others favour LME labour markets (Kanbayashi and Takenoshita, 2014). In other words, we can find both CME and LME labour market in one society.Design/methodology/approachSince Granovetter’s (1973) pioneer study, scholars are interested in investigating in what way social network influence our job searching outcomes. However, these researchers have not yet yielded consistent results. Scholars argue that the institutional context of labour market can shape the network impacts on our job search outcome (Chen, 2014; Chua, 2011).FindingsSurprisingly, this paper finds that there is no room for the use of personal contact in the public sector in both China and Japan. But, mean status is positively related to annual income in the private companies sector in both Japan and China. The significant influences of mean status in the private sectors in both China and Japan reflect the reinforcing of existing social inequality structure. This is because as the status of contact can facilitate respondents' job attainment process, those who are already in higher social status are more likely than those who are in the bottom of the social strata, to get a better job with the help from their network members.Originality/valueThe above findings show us that social network can exert various impacts on people's job searching process even in the same society. This is because it is possible that the labour market are segmented. These segments have very different practices. This difference attributes to the inconsistent findings of network effects on occupational attainment process. Therefore, it is essential to locate which labour market respondents are in, and the features of this labour market. This can help us know more about the use and effectiveness of network in different types of labour markets.

An Information Dissemination Influence Model for Mobile Social Network under Multi-Role View

Mobile social networks are dominating in our society’s daily life because of fast advancements of information technologies. To further exploit benefits from the ubiquitous service, studying the influence of information dissemination in this kind of social network becomes a necessity. This paper proposes a mobile social network influence model with regard to multiple roles. In the model, the concept of group is adopted to analyze a user’s role in different contexts. Through the introduction of role’s level and group’s relativity, information dissemination can be investigated deeply, and then, with the Floyd-Warshall algorithm, information strength matrix is constructed to study each node’s influence and under-influence indexes in the network, in addition, the comprehensive influence under multi-role view is also expressed distinctly in the fuzzy form. The result of this research will help find out preferable information disseminators as a new business strategy in e-commerce. Furthermore, it is also useful for detecting gossips and controlling its dissemination in social management.