The Mechanism and Influencing Factors of Herding Effect of College Students' Network Public Opinion
Abstract This study investigated the mechanism and influencing factors of herding effect in network public opinion of college students. Experiments by controlling sources of ideas and the strength of concern explore how college students process information of public opinion on the network. To explore factors that influence college students generating herding effect in the public opinion on the network, questionnaires and data test were used. The result shows that herding effect is the result of consensus heuristic and competence heuristic. On the other hand, various sources of information, which are from either the majority or experts, have equal impact on college students' herding effect in network public opinion. Besides, college students' knowledge structure is not significant to generate herding effect. On the contrary, gender, geography and original opinions have a significant impact on the generation of herding