ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how immediate returns on time investment in daily contacts vary across three kinds of networks: nonoverlapped, partially
overlapped, and overlapped. One starting argument is that immediate returns tend to diminish in overlapped networks. Data were drawn from contact diaries that fi fty-two informants in Taiwan kept for three months in spring 2004. After screening out ineligible contacts, I used 45,457 contacts in multilevel analyses. Using time, or the duration of each interpersonal contact, as the measure of investment, the chapter examines its effects on two forms of immediate returns that the informants evaluated after each contact: how signifi cant the contact was to them, and the extent to which they regarded the contact as pleasant.
