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Motivated by the emergence of new Peer-to-Peer insurance organizations that rethink how insurance is organized, we have proposed a theoretical model of decision-making in risk-sharing arrangements with risk heterogeneity and incomplete information about the risk distribution as core features. For these new, informal organizations, the available institutional solutions to heterogeneity (e.g., mandatory participation or price differentiation) are either impossible or undesirable. Hence, we need to understand the scope conditions under which individuals are motivated to participate in a bottom-up risk-sharing setting. The model considers participation as a utility-maximizing alternative for agents with higher risk levels, agents who are more risk averse, are driven more by solidarity motives, and less susceptible to cost fluctuations. This basic micro-level model is used to simulate decision-making for agent populations in a dynamic, interdependent setting. Simulation results show that successful risk-sharing arrangements may work if participants are driven by motivations of solidarity or risk aversion, but this is less likely in populations more heterogeneous in risk, as individual motivations can less frequently make up for larger cost deficiencies. At the same time, more heterogeneous groups deal better with uncertainty and temporary cost fluctuations than more homogeneous populations do. In the latter, cascades following temporary peaks in support requests more often result in complete failure, while under full information about the risk distribution this would not have happened.

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We derive hypotheses from popular accounts of how use of social media affects our strong ties. Several authors have suggested that social media use erodes our strong ties by increasing the volume of social interactions and decreasing their depth. Using two-wave panel data representative of the Dutch population between 15 and 45 years, we examine changes in the core discussion networks (CDNs) of 5312 respondents (with 10,896 relations). Contradicting an erosion of strong ties, we found positive effects of social media use on CDN size, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Social media use was positively related to talking to CDN members in our cross-sectional model. Finally, we found that the CDNs of frequent social media users were more dynamic than those of less frequent users: they are more likely to both lose old and gain new ties. This suggests that Internet use is associated with more, and more dynamic, social interaction.