Libo LI, professor in NEOMA BS’ Information Systems, Supply Chain Management & Decision-Making department has just had his work published in the European Journal of Operational Research, a CNRS rank 1 journal.

Libo LI’s paper, “Predicting Online Invitation Responses with a Competing Risk Model Using Privacy-Friendly Social Event” is available online since April 5th, 2018.

“Predicting people’s responses to invitations is an important issue for social event management, as the decision-making process behind member responses to invitations is complicated. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a new method to predict whether and when people will respond to open invitations. Validated using real life datasets including 31,230 people and 8,885 events, the proposed method not only presents the variables that predict attendance (such as past attendance and social network), but also those that predict faster responses. Our findings will help event organizers predict how many people will attend events, allowing them to organize effectively.” explains Libo LI.

This topic, which concerns the use of social media data, is all the more newsworthy as Facebook has recently been in the spotlight over its use of personal data. "Europe has a very different policy on this subject compared to the US. Today we find ourselves in a context where rules have to be set, and directives given.”

What next?
“I'm now going to see whether this methodology can be applied to other themes. With the assistance of partner companies, I'll be attempting to develop an analysis of more specific events, linked to technology for example, to see whether there is an increase in positive response rates. Whilst guaranteeing the right to privacy, the goal is to respond specifically to the current market needs thereby allowing the application of my research. Our research helps the school and the students in the short-term, but companies and society in the long-term.”