Network Effects and Activities of University Students in a Seminar

University seminars require students to be involved in intensive activities that require cooperation with each other and also develop their own skills and abilities. In such activities, their friends are also an important factor for their activities—we call these network effects. This is similar to activities pursued within modern organizations such as companies and non-profit organizations. Using Bonacich centrality we can take account of these direct and indirect network effects. The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the determinants of activities in a university seminar. In addition to network effects, we included other factors such as the ``Fundamental Competencies for Working Persons'' that is promoted by the Ministry of Economic Trade and Industry, ``generalized trust'' and students' GPA. Results indicate that Bonacich centrality has a positive and significant effect on students' activities and its magnitude is as the same as that of GPA. In the Fundamental Competencies for Working Persons the competency of ``discipline'' is both positive and significant. For generalized trust results are negative and significant and this effect is interpreted by Uslaner's (2008) generalized trust as optimism. These three significant factors are consistent with Putnam's (1993) definition of social capital.