title: Skill complementarity enhances heterophily in collaboration networks.
abstract: Much empirical evidence shows that individuals usually exhibit significant homophily in social networks. We demonstrate, however, skill complementarity enhances heterophily in the formation of collaboration networks, where people prefer to forge social ties with people who have professions different from their own. We construct a model to quantify the heterophily by assuming that individuals choose collaborators to maximize utility. Using a huge database of online societies, we find evidence of heterophily in collaboration networks. The results of model calibration confirm the presence of heterophily. Both empirical analysis and model calibration show that the heterophilous feature is persistent along the evolution of online societies. Furthermore, the degree of skill complementarity is positively correlated with their production output. Our work sheds new light on the scientific research utility of virtual worlds for studying human behaviors in complex socioeconomic systems.
authors.affiliation: School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.|Postdoctoral Research Station, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.|Departmenent of Mathematics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Wen-Jie
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Postdoctoral Research Station, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.|Departmenent of Mathematics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Ming-Xia
authors.initials: MX
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.|Research Center for Econophysics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Zhi-Qiang
authors.initials: ZQ
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Shanda Games Ltd., 690 Bibo Road, Shanghai 201203, China.
authors.forename: Qun-Zhao
authors.initials: QZ
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.|Zagreb School of Economics and Management, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.|Luxembourg School of Business, Luxembourg.|Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Rijeka, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia.|Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Podobnik
authors.affiliation: School of Business, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.|Departmenent of Mathematics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.|Research Center for Econophysics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
authors.forename: Wei-Xing
authors.initials: WX
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
authors.forename: H Eugene
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Stanley
mesh_terms: D019058:Community Networks / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009790:Occupations; D060756:Social Networking; D066107:Social Skills