Spatial distance and mobile business social network density

ABSTRACT

Following the increasing adoption of mobile communication, scholars have shown interest in the role of place on the structure of mobile social networks. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between spatial distance and the closure and diversity of businesses mobile social networks. We used a database that aggregates actual mobile communication patterns of business users of a large Israeli cell phone company (n =  16,199). Our findings, among a large sample of businesses, provide support for the place and mobile communication perspective. The results reveal a negative association between spatial distance and mobile business communication networks. As spatial distance between business network members increases, business social ties through mobile communication decreases. Furthermore, the results also revealed a negative association between spatial distance and mobile network density. As the spatial distance between business users increases, the density of the mobile communication network diminishes. Physical proximity promotes the development of dense business networks. The implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile communication and distance
• homophily
• social network density
• closure and diversity ties
• strong and weak ties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yossef Arie is a Ph.D. Student at the Department of Sociology, University of Haifa (Israel). His research focuses on the study of ethnic homophilly in the social network structure of mobile and computer mediated communication. [email: [email protected]].

Gustavo S. Mesch is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa (Israel). His research focus on the impact of information and communication technologies on family communication, social network structure, social capital and youth culture. [email: [email protected]].

Notes

1. Each city had more than 15 customers of the cellular operator.

2. Data from Dun and Bradstreet and the Yellow Pages.

3. The database of the cellular operator we used included only these three industries.