Competing for Attention: Is the Showiest Also the Best?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Manzini, Paola; Mariotti, Marco
• 署名单位: University of St Andrews; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of London; Queen Mary University London
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12425
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 827-844
• 关键词: consideration sets; CHOICE; MODEL

摘要

There are many situations in which alternatives ranked by quality wish to be chosen and compete for the imperfect attention of a chooser by selecting their own salience. The chooser may be tricked' into choosing more salient but inferior alternatives. We investigate when competitive forces ensure instead that (strictly) higher salience is diagnostic of (strictly) higher quality and the most frequently chosen alternative is the best one. We prove that the structure of externalities in the technology of salience is key. Broadly speaking, positive externalities in salience favour correlation between quality and salience.