| By: |
Gossner, Olivier;
Steiner, Jakub;
Stewart, Colin |
| Abstract: |
We study the impact of manipulating the attention of a decision-maker who
learns sequentially about a number of items before making a choice. Under
natural assumptions on the decision-maker’s strategy, directing attention
toward one item increases its likelihood of being chosen regardless of its
value. This result applies when the decisionmaker can reject all items in
favor of an outside option with known value; if no outside option is
available, the direction of the effect of manipulation depends on the value of
the item. A similar result applies to manipulation of choices in bandit
problems. |
| Keywords: |
sequential sampling; marketing; persuasion; attention; 770652 |
| JEL: |
J1 |
| Date: |
2020–12–09 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:107907&r=all |