The Effect of Social Distance on Job Search: An Experiment

Abstract

Many empirical evidences show that social distance as an important characteristic of social network will influence individual behavior. We reported the results of an experiment that studied the effect of one form of social distance on job search behavior by using the social network composed of acquaintances and composed of strangers. We found people with less social distance performed more favorably than people with far distance, which provides evidence friends are helpful in job search activity.