Belief Updating in Individual and Social Learning: A Field Experiment on the Internet
Abstract
We conducted a field experiment on the Internet and investigated the participants' belief updating in an individual learning environment where they observe a sequence of private signals and in a social learning environment where they observe a sequence of other people's actions. We observed that participants do not update their posterior beliefs as efficiently as Bayesian, and that participants rely more on private signals than on other people's actions even when the informativeness of both is identical. Furthermore, we confirmed that participant's trust in other people's actions and their conformity to other people's actions are affected by their demographic characteristics.Download Info
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Paper provided by Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University in its series ISER Discussion Paper with number 0690.Length:
Date of creation: May 2007
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Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0690
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- Sushil Bikhchandani & David Hirshleifer & Ivo Welch, 2010.
"A theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom and cultural change as informational Cascades,"
Levine's Working Paper Archive
1193, David K. Levine.
- Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
- Angela Hung & Jeff Dominitz, 2004. "Homogeneous Actions and Hetergeneous Beliefs: Experimental Evidence on the Formation of Information Cascades," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 64, Econometric Society.
- Anderson, Lisa R & Holt, Charles A, 1997. "Information Cascades in the Laboratory," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 847-62, December.
- Markus Noth & Martin Weber, 2003. "Information Aggregation with Random Ordering: Cascades and Overconfidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 166-189, January.
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