IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cda/wpaper/355.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The value of and demand for diverse news sources

Author

Listed:
  • Anujit Chakraborty
  • Evan Calford

    (Department of Economics, University of California Davis)

Abstract

We study the value of and the demand for instrumentally-valuable information in a simple decision environment where signals are transparently polarized. We find that in both information aggregation and acquisition, subjects use sophisticated heuristics to counter the polarization in signals. Even though the number of precise Bayesian reports are small, most subjects (64%) generate unpolarized reports even when faced with polarized signals. Subjects placed in a market place of information rarely end up buying polarized signals and instead overwhelmingly opt for diverse information. The demand for diverse information increases as diverse information becomes more valuable and decreases as it becomes more expensive.

Suggested Citation

  • Anujit Chakraborty & Evan Calford, 2023. "The value of and demand for diverse news sources," Working Papers 355, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:355
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/zVQHR9BBQfNEpsoPWFt1ZMV6/Mar_20_with_instructions.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin Enke, 2020. "What You See Is All There Is," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(3), pages 1363-1398.
    2. Mary A. Burke & Michael Manz, 2014. "Economic Literacy and Inflation Expectations: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(7), pages 1421-1456, October.
    3. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    4. Ambuehl, Sandro & Li, Shengwu, 2018. "Belief updating and the demand for information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 21-39.
    5. Pëllumb Reshidi & Alessandro Lizzeri & Leeat Yariv & Jimmy H. Chan & Wing Suen, 2021. "Individual and Collective Information Acquisition: An Experimental Study," NBER Working Papers 29557, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Felipe A. Araujo & Stephanie W. Wang & Alistair J. Wilson, 2021. "The Times They Are A-Changing: Experimenting with Dynamic Adverse Selection," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 1-22, November.
    7. Duffy, John & Hopkins, Ed & Kornienko, Tatiana & Ma, Mingye, 2019. "Information choice in a social learning experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 295-315.
    8. Christopher Roth & Sonja Settele & Johannes Wohlfart, 2022. "Risk Exposure and Acquisition of Macroeconomic Information," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 34-53, March.
    9. Salvatore Nunnari & Giovanni Montari, 2019. "Audi Alteram Partem: An Experiment on Selective Exposure to Information," Working Papers 650, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    10. Romain Gauriot & Lionel Page & John Wooders, 2016. "Nash at Wimbledon: Evidence from Half a Million Serves," QuBE Working Papers 046, QUT Business School.
    11. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 280-316, April.
    12. Gary Charness & Ryan Oprea & Sevgi Yuksel, 2021. "How do People Choose Between Biased Information Sources? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1656-1691.
    13. Duffy, John & Hopkins, Ed & Kornienko, Tatiana, 2021. "Lone wolf or herd animal? Information choice and learning from others," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    14. Ananda Ganguly & Joshua Tasoff, 2017. "Fantasy and Dread: The Demand for Information and the Consumption Utility of the Future," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(12), pages 4037-4060, December.
    15. Nielsen, Kirby, 2020. "Preferences for the resolution of uncertainty and the timing of information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    16. Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Inference by Believers in the Law of Small Numbers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 775-816.
    17. Florian Zimmermann, 2015. "Clumped or Piecewise? Evidence on Preferences for Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(4), pages 740-753, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Felix Chopras & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2024. "The Demand for News: Accuracy Concerns Versus Belief Confirmation Motives," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(661), pages 1806-1834.
    2. Lohse, Johannes & McDonald, Rebecca, 2021. "Absolute groupishness and the demand for information," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242454, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Castagnetti, Alessandro & Schmacker, Renke, 2022. "Protecting the ego: Motivated information selection and updating," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    4. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    5. Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Moumita Deb & Johannes Lohse & Rebecca McDonald, 2024. "The swing voter's curse revisited: Transparency's impact on committee voting," Discussion Papers 24-01, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    6. Cheng, Ing-Haw & Hsiaw, Alice, 2022. "Distrust in experts and the origins of disagreement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    7. Chopra, Felix & Haaland, Ingar & Roth, Christopher, 2022. "Do people demand fact-checked news? Evidence from U.S. Democrats," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    8. Vladimír Novák & Andrei Matveenko & Silvio Ravaioli, 2024. "The Status Quo and Belief Polarization of Inattentive Agents: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 1-39, November.
    9. Salvatore Nunnari & Giovanni Montari, 2019. "Audi Alteram Partem: An Experiment on Selective Exposure to Information," Working Papers 650, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    10. Kai Barron & Steffen Huck & Philippe Jehiel, 2024. "Everyday Econometricians: Selection Neglect and Overoptimism When Learning from Others," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 162-198, August.
    11. Daniel J. Benjamin, 2018. "Errors in Probabilistic Reasoning and Judgment Biases," NBER Working Papers 25200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Ro’i Zultan & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Santiago Oliveros, 2024. "Beyond Value: on the Role of Symmetryin Demand for Information," Working Papers 2411, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    13. Meissner, Thomas & Pfeiffer, Philipp, 2022. "Measuring preferences over the temporal resolution of consumption uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    14. Christoph March & Anthony Ziegelmeyer, 2018. "Excessive Herding in the Laboratory: The Role of Intuitive Judgments," CESifo Working Paper Series 6855, CESifo.
    15. Esponda, Ignacio & Vespa, Emanuel & Yuksel, Sevgi, 2024. "Mental Models and Learning: The Case of Base-Rate Neglect," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt8cb387t8, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    16. Fabian Bopp & Wendelin Schnedler & Radovan Vadovic, 2023. "Conformism of the Minorities: Theory and Experiment," Working Papers Dissertations 108, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    17. López-Pérez, Raúl & Pintér, Ágnes & Sánchez-Mangas, Rocío, 2022. "Some conditions (not) affecting selection neglect: Evidence from the lab," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 140-157.
    18. Bandyopadhyay, Siddhartha & Deb, Moumita & Lohse, Johannes & McDonald, Rebecca, 2024. "The Swing Voter’s Curse Revisited: Transparency’s Impact on Committee Voting," Working Papers 0744, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    19. Mohsen Foroughifar, 2021. "Errors in Learning from Others' Choices," Papers 2105.01043, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    20. Thomas Mariotti & Nikolaus Schweizer & Nora Szech & Jonas von Wangenheim, 2023. "Information Nudges and Self-Control," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2182-2197, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:355. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Letters and Science IT Services Unit (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.