Conceptual Spaces and the Consequences of Category Spanning

A general finding in economic and organizational sociology shows that objects that span categories lose appeal to audiences. This paper argues that the negative consequences of crossing boundaries are more severe when the categories spanned are distant and have high contrast. Available empirical str...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inSociological science Vol. 2; no. 13; pp. 252 - 286
Main Authors Kovacs, Balazs, Hannan, Michael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Stanford Society for Sociological Science 01.05.2015
Subjects
Category Spanning
Conceptual Space
Online Ratings
Restaurants
Similarity
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:A general finding in economic and organizational sociology shows that objects that span categories lose appeal to audiences. This paper argues that the negative consequences of crossing boundaries are more severe when the categories spanned are distant and have high contrast. Available empirical strategies do not incorporate information on the distances among categories. Here we introduce novel measures of distance in conceptual space and derive measures for typicality, category contrast, and categorical niche width. Using the proposed measurement approach, we test our theory using data on online reviews of books and restaurants.
ISSN:2330-6696
2330-6696
DOI:10.15195/v2.a13