University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Marketing Papers Wharton Faculty Research 2015 Credit Scoring with Social Network Data Yanhao Wei University of Pennsylvania Pinar Yildirim University of Pennsylvania Christophe Van den Bulte University of Pennsylvania Chrysanthos Dellarocas Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/marketing_papers Part of the Applied Behavior Analysis Commons, Behavioral Economics Commons, Cognition and Perception Commons, Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons, Marketing Commons, Real Estate Commons, and the Social Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Wei, Y., Yildirim, P., Van den Bulte, C., & Dellarocas, C. (2015). Credit Scoring with Social Network Data. Marketing Science, 35 (2), 234-258. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2015.0949 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/marketing_papers/383 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Credit Scoring with Social Network Data Abstract Motivated by the growing practice of using social network data in credit scoring, we analyze the impact of using network-based measures on customer score accuracy and on tie formation among customers. We develop a series of models to compare the accuracy of customer scores obtained with and without network data. We also investigate how the accuracy of social network-based scores changes when consumers can strategically construct their social networks to attain higher scores. We find that those who are motivated to improve their scores may form fewer ties and focus more on similar partners. The impact of such endogenous tie formation on the accuracy of consumer score is ambiguous. Scores can become more accurate as a result of modifications in social networks, but this accuracy improvement may come with greater network fragmentation.