IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/106963.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Effects of TV airtime regulation on advertising quality and welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Henriques, David

Abstract

This paper investigates how regulations that limit advertising airtime may affect advertising quality and social welfare. I show, first, conditions under which an advertising cap may reduce or improve the average quality of advertising broadcast on a free-to-air TV platform. Second, an advertising cap may reduce TV platform’s and firms’ profits, while the net effect on viewers’ welfare is ambiguous because the ad quality may decrease as a result of a regulatory cap offsetting the direct gain from watching fewer ads. The results suggest that a regulator that is trying to increase social welfare via regulation of the volume of advertising on TV should take the effect of advertising quality into consideration. Implementing an advertising cap without regard to ad quality may result in lower social welfare than leaving advertising airtime unregulated.

Suggested Citation

  • Henriques, David, 2020. "Effects of TV airtime regulation on advertising quality and welfare," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106963, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:106963
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/106963/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2016. "Advertising Content and Television Advertising Avoidance," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 51-72, April.
    2. Kerkhof, Anna & Münster, Johannes, 2015. "Quantity restrictions on advertising, commercial media bias, and welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 124-141.
    3. Changying Li & Jianhu Zhang, 2016. "Program Quality Competition in Broadcasting Markets," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 18(4), pages 666-689, August.
    4. Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2008. "A Two-Sided, Empirical Model of Television Advertising and Viewing Markets," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 356-378, 05-06.
    5. Donald J. Wright, 1994. "Television Advertising Regulation and Program Quality," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 70(211), pages 361-367, December.
    6. Jura Liaukonyte & Thales Teixeira & Kenneth C. Wilbur, 2015. "Television Advertising and Online Shopping," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(3), pages 311-330, May.
    7. Stühmeier Torben & Wenzel Tobias, 2012. "Regulating Advertising in the Presence of Public Service Broadcasting," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 1-23, June.
    8. Simon P. Anderson & Stephen Coate, 2005. "Market Provision of Broadcasting: A Welfare Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 947-972.
    9. Michael Spence & Bruce Owen, 1977. "Television Programming, Monopolistic Competition, and Welfare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 103-126.
    10. Peter O. Steiner, 1952. "Program Patterns and Preferences, and the Workability of Competition in Radio Broadcasting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 66(2), pages 194-223.
    11. Thales Teixeira & Rosalind Picard & Rana el Kaliouby, 2014. "Why, When, and How Much to Entertain Consumers in Advertisements? A Web-Based Facial Tracking Field Study," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(6), pages 809-827, November.
    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. Henriques, David, 2021. "Effects of TV airtime regulation on advertising quality and welfare," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    2. Lapo Filistrucchi & Andrea Mangani & Luigi Luini, 2012. "Banning Ads from Prime-Time State TV: Lessons from France," Working Papers 12-23, NET Institute.
    3. Greiner, Tanja & Sahm, Marco, 2018. "How effective are advertising bans? On the demand for quality in two-sided media markets," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 48-60.
    4. Changying Li & Youping Li & Jianhu Zhang, 2023. "On the regulation of public broadcasting," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 138(2), pages 129-146, March.
    5. Marco Antonielli & Lapo Filistrucchi, 2011. "Collusion and the political differentiation of newspapers," Working Papers 11-26, NET Institute, revised Nov 2011.
    6. Anderson, Simon P. & Gabszewicz, Jean J., 2006. "The Media and Advertising: A Tale of Two-Sided Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 567-614, Elsevier.
    7. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Feng Zhu, 2010. "Strategies to Fight Ad-Sponsored Rivals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(9), pages 1484-1499, September.
    8. Torben Stühmeier, 2019. "Media market concentration and pluralism," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 247-259, April.
    9. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Feng Zhu, 2009. "Strategies to Fight Ad-sponsored Rivals," Working Papers 09-09, NET Institute, revised Sep 2009.
    10. Behringer, Stefan & Filistrucchi, Lapo, 2015. "Hotelling competition and political differentiation with more than two newspapers," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 36-49.
    11. Hans Jarle Kind & Tore Nilssen & Lars Sørgard, 2009. "Business Models for Media Firms: Does Competition Matter for How They Raise Revenue?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 1112-1128, 11-12.
    12. Attila Ambrus & Emilio Calvano & Markus Reisinger, 2016. "Either or Both Competition: A "Two-Sided" Theory of Advertising with Overlapping Viewerships," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 189-222, August.
    13. Germano, Fabrizio & Meier, Martin, 2013. "Concentration and self-censorship in commercial media," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 117-130.
    14. Ohki, Kazuyoshi, 2021. "Should public broadcasting companies be continued, scrambled, disbanded or privatized?," MPRA Paper 106766, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Alaoui, Larbi & Germano, Fabrizio, 2020. "Time scarcity and the market for news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 173-195.
    16. Lin Panlang, 2011. "Market Provision of Program Quality in the Television Broadcasting Industry," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-22, March.
    17. Shekhar, Shiva, 2020. "Zero Pricing Platform Competition," MPRA Paper 99364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Benoît Pierre Freyens & Chris Jones, 2014. "Efficient Allocation of Radio Spectrum," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(1), pages 1-23, February.
    19. Simon P. Anderson & Stephen Coate, 2005. "Market Provision of Broadcasting: A Welfare Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 947-972.
    20. Gregory S. Crawford, 2015. "The economics of television and online video markets," ECON - Working Papers 197, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    advertising; ad quality; rRegulation; TV; two-sided markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    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:ehl:lserod:106963. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.