Causes and Consequences of Time Investment in Friendship Networks: A Dynamic Analysis of the Polish Panel Survey Polpan 1988-2013

Time investment in one’s friendship network depends on the utility function U_i = αlogY_i+(1–α)logO_i that people maximize, where α is the social tie parameter (between 0 and 1) measuring the i-th actor’s taste for bonding with friends, and  O refers to the taste for all other leisure-time activities. In the theoretical part of the paper, we connect this utility function with time investment in friendship network (I) assuming that the numbers of friends and the density of their contacts are crucial for the amount of time that people actually spend with friends. The Polish Panel Survey POLPAN 1988-2013 contains information on how frequently respondents meet with friends (I_i,t, our main leisure-time variable), numbers of friends (N_i,t), density of their contacts (D_i,t) and several socio-demographic characteristics of respondents for the period of measurement (t) and earlier periods (t-1, …, t-5, where the period-units are 5-year waves of the POLPAN study). In the empirical part of the paper we examine main determinants of time investment in one’s friendship network, focusing on family formation variables. We show that time investment, as well as the change in number of friends and the change in density of contacts among friends, depend on marital status, number of children, and number of people in the household. In addition, we confirm previous findings that “non-redundant ties among friends” influence income attainment and that having friends with entrepreneurial experience increases people’s chances of establishing their own businesses, independently of the number of potential bridges between friends. The paper concludes with a discussion on meeting friends as a form of leisure activity that plays a significant role in the formation of social capital, and has important implications for generating social inequality.