IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ajk/ajkdps/264.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Information Be Too Much? Information Source Selection and Beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Amelio

    (University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE))

Abstract

Agents undertaking economic decisions are exposed to an ever-increasing amount of information sources, especially nowadays in what has been defined as the Information Age. This paper investigates how the number of available information sources impacts agents’ ability to (i) select reliable sources and (ii) use their content effectively to update their beliefs. To answer these questions, I set up an online experiment informed by a simple automata decision-making and belief-updating model. Participants’ source selection performances deteriorate as the number of available sources increases. Also, ceteris paribus, their performance in updating their beliefs using the selected sources worsens, showing a trade-off between source selection and belief updating performances. These results may help to guide policy-making decisions, providing evidence on externalities of information production.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Amelio, 2023. "Can Information Be Too Much? Information Source Selection and Beliefs," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 264, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_264_2023.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2023
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Information Overload; Complexity; Belief Updating; Experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:ajk:ajkdps:264. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: ECONtribute Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econtribute.de .

    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.