- 學位論文
社會網路對消費者效用之影響：代理人基建模之應用
The Consumer Utility and Social Networks: An Application of Agent-Based Modeling
摘要
本文目的在研究在市場中社會網路對消費者效用的影響。我們以代理人基方法模擬市場中消費者的互動模式，並以Jager (2003)中的模型架構為基礎重新建構新的模型。此外我們使用了二維的效用函數、並以時間的概念替代所有消費類型使模型更為豐富且能夠涵蓋更多的情況，試圖以模擬的方法提供數據上的解釋。我們模擬了不同的社會網路、社會網路密度、消費者認知類型、消費者人數對消費者效用的影響，並透過將效用函數分解成個人與社會部分找出影響效用的主要因素。 研究結果發現在任何社會網路中社會網路越疏散消費者所能獲得的效用反而越高，透過將效用分解成個人與社會兩部分可以發現造成的主因為社會效用的變化而非個人效用的變化，此外我們分析消費者認知類型的比例亦發現了相同的結果，並得出造成的主因來自極端值出現的比率。我們透過同時觀察參與市場人數與社會網路密度對消費者效用的影響發現，當社群處在一個適當的平衡下會出現較高的消費者效用，也就是較疏散的網路密度配上較多的消費者人數與較密集的網路配上較少的消費者人數，而且造成較高的消費者效用主因亦是來自於社會效用的影響而非個人效用。
並列摘要
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social networks on consumers' utility in the market. We apply an agent-based model to simulate the interaction of consumers in the market and rebuild a model based on Jager (2003). In order to provide statistic explanations, our model considered two-dimensional utility function and products as well as the concept of decision-making cycle which is also known as product involvement. We simulated the effects of different social networks structures, social network densities, consumer cognitive process, and number of consumers on consumer utility to identify the main factors of consumers' utility into individual and social parts. The results of this study show that in any social network, the lower the social network density is, the higher the utility that consumers obtain. By decomposing the utility into two parts, individual and social, it can be found that the key factor of the change of consumers' utility is from the social utility rather than individual utility. The same results can be found in our analysis of the proportion of consumer cognitive process as well. We concluded that the results are mainly from the proportion of extreme values. By analyzing the effect of the number of market participants and social network density on consumer utility simultaneously, we found that when the community is in an art of balance, i.e., when a lower social network density with more consumers or a higher social network density with fewer consumers, consumers will obtain a higher utility. In our study, the results of consumers' utility are mainly influenced by social utility rather than individual utility.