Investigation of the Causal Relation of Personal Financial Activities and the Social Media Influence

Abstract

Many social network (SN) applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. provide many benefits that allow users to connect, follow each other, share various content, and influence them to engage in various activities in their personal lives. Sometimes it impacts their habits such as online buying, restaurant check-in, traveling, etc. Different existing researchers have used a variety of approaches to identify these impacts on various topics, including fitness, psychological health, and so on. However, very few research has been done on investigating individual expenditures. Thus, in this work, we aim to 1) generate an appropriate dataset based on social media usage and users financial activities, 2) investigate the correlation between social media use and personal financial activities, 3) estimate personal expenditure based on various social media aspects such as checking into restaurants, buying clothes, traveling to new locations, doing something entertaining, and so on. We collected data through an online survey using social network platforms such as Facebook. In the study we apply a causal model using propensity score-based inverse probability treatment weighting (IPTW) and a doubly robust estimator along with some other methods. We evaluate our approach by refuting the outcome. Finally, we find that social media usage has a significant impact on spending patterns.