Relative importance of effects in stochastic actor-oriented models

A measure of relative importance of network effects in the stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) is proposed. The SAOM is a parametric model for statistical inference in longitudinal social networks. The complexity of the model makes the interpretation of inferred results difficult. So far, the focus is on significance tests while the relative importance of effects is usually ignored. Indeed, there is no established measure to determine the relative importance of an effect in a SAOM. We introduce such a measure based on the influence effects have on decisions of individual actors in the network. We demonstrate its utility on empirical data by analyzing an evolving friendship network of university freshmen.