IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/122143.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Informed Consumers Undermine Product Protests

Author

Listed:
  • Tajika, Tomoya

Abstract

We model a protest against a firm aiming to remove a product that causes negative externalities. Both the firm and consumers are uncertain about the product’s value, but consumers receive noisy signals. Price plays a key role in aggregating information. When prices are high, consumers with both good and bad signals derive almost the same utility from the product being sold, making protests uninformative. By endogenizing the price, we show that as consumer signals improve, protests become less informative, reducing social welfare. This suggests that consumer ignorance may play a role in protest success.

Suggested Citation

  • Tajika, Tomoya, 2024. "Informed Consumers Undermine Product Protests," MPRA Paper 122143, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:122143
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/122143/1/MPRA_paper_122143.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timothy J. Feddersen & Thomas W. Gilligan, 2001. "Saints and Markets: Activists and the Supply of Credence Goods," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 149-171, March.
    2. Robert Innes, 2006. "A Theory of Consumer Boycotts under Symmetric Information and Imperfect Competition," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(511), pages 355-381, April.
    3. S. Nageeb Ali & Charles Lin, 2013. "Why People Vote: Ethical Motives and Social Incentives," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 73-98, May.
    4. Kaz Miyagiwa, 2009. "Saving Dolphins: Boycotts, Trade Sanctions, And Unobservable Technology," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(3), pages 883-902, August.
    5. Georgy Egorov & Bård Harstad, 2017. "Private Politics and Public Regulation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(4), pages 1652-1682.
    6. Paul Fischer & Steven Huddart, 2008. "Optimal Contracting with Endogenous Social Norms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1459-1475, September.
    7. Marco Battaglini & Rebecca B. Morton & Eleonora Patacchini, 2020. "Social Groups and the Effectiveness of Protests," Working Papers 20200039, New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Science, revised Feb 2020.
    8. Peck, James, 2017. "Temporary boycotts as self-fulfilling disruptions of markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 1-12.
    9. Heijnen, Pim & van der Made, Allard, 2012. "A signaling theory of consumer boycotts," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 404-418.
    10. Timothy Feddersen & Alvaro Sandroni, 2006. "A Theory of Participation in Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1271-1282, September.
    11. Igal Hendel & Saul Lach & Yossi Spiegel, 2017. "Consumers' activism: the cottage cheese boycott," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 48(4), pages 972-1003, December.
    12. Marco Battaglini, 2017. "Public Protests and Policy Making," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(1), pages 485-549.
    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. Yi Zheng, 2020. "Non-organized boycott: alliance advantage and free riding incentives in uneven wars of attrition," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(1), pages 123-141, March.
    2. Zijun Luo & Yonghong Zhou, 2020. "Decomposing the effects of consumer boycotts: evidence from the anti-Japanese demonstration in China," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(6), pages 2615-2634, June.
    3. Philipp Herkenhoff & Sebastian Krautheim, 2018. "The International Organization of Production in the Regulatory Void," CESifo Working Paper Series 6922, CESifo.
    4. Roberto A. Weber & Sili Zhang, 2023. "What Money Can Buy: How Market Exchange Promotes Values," CESifo Working Paper Series 10809, CESifo.
    5. Dorothée Brécard & Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, 2024. "Information campaigns and ecolabels by environmental NGOs: Effective strategies to eliminate environmentally harmful components?," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-04592469, HAL.
    6. Herkenhoff, Philipp & Krautheim, Sebastian, 2022. "The international organization of production in the regulatory void," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    7. Dorothée Brécard & Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline, 2020. "The market for "harmful component-free" products under pressure from the NGOs," Working Papers halshs-02878337, HAL.
    8. Valentina A. Bali & Lindon J. Robison & Richard Winder, 2020. "What Motivates People to Vote? The Role of Selfishness, Duty, and Social Motives When Voting," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    9. Alberto Grillo, 2020. "Ethical Voting in Heterogenous Groups," AMSE Working Papers 2034, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Apr 2021.
    10. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    11. Baron, David P., 2011. "Credence attributes, voluntary organizations, and social pressure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1331-1338.
    12. Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, 2022. "The Morality of Markets," Working Papers ECARES 2022-35, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Thomas P. Lyon & John W. Maxwell, 2011. "Greenwash: Corporate Environmental Disclosure under Threat of Audit," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 3-41, March.
    14. Wong, Tsz-Ning & Yang, Lily Ling & Zhao, Xin, 2024. "Voting to persuade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 208-216.
    15. Cuadras-Morató Xavier & Raya Josep Maria, 2016. "Boycott or Buycott?: Internal Politics and Consumer Choices," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(1), pages 185-218, January.
    16. Aleix Calveras & Juan-José Ganuza & Gerard Llobet, 2005. "Regulation and Opportunism: How Much Activism Do We Need?," Working Papers wp2005_0508, CEMFI.
    17. David K. Levine & Andrea Mattozzi, 2020. "Voter Turnout with Peer Punishment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(10), pages 3298-3314, October.
    18. Daniel Kling & Thomas Stratmann, 2016. "The Efficacy of Political Advertising: A Voter Participation Field Experiment with Multiple Robo Calls and Controls for Selection Effects," CESifo Working Paper Series 6195, CESifo.
    19. Peck, James, 2017. "Temporary boycotts as self-fulfilling disruptions of markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 1-12.
    20. Pamina Koenig & Sandra Poncet, 2019. "Reputation and (un)fair trade: Effects on French importers from the Rana Plaza collapse," Post-Print halshs-02350105, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Protest; boycotts; information aggregation; ethical voters; monopoly pricing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:pra:mprapa:122143. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.