IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2408.01250.html

Persuading an inattentive and privately informed receiver

Author

Listed:
  • Pietro Dall'Ara

Abstract

This paper studies the persuasion of a receiver who accesses information only if she exerts costly attention effort. A sender designs an experiment to persuade the receiver to take a specific action. The experiment affects the receiver's attention effort, that is, the probability that she updates her beliefs. As a result, persuasion has two margins: extensive (effort) and intensive (action). The receiver's utility exhibits a supermodularity property in information and effort. By leveraging this property, we prove a general equivalence between experiments and persuasion mechanisms \`a la Kolotilin et al.\ (2017). In applications, the sender's optimal strategy involves censoring favorable states.

Suggested Citation

  • Pietro Dall'Ara, 2024. "Persuading an inattentive and privately informed receiver," Papers 2408.01250, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2408.01250
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.01250
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beauchêne, Dorian & Li, Jian & Li, Ming, 2019. "Ambiguous persuasion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 312-365.
    2. Andrew Caplin & Mark Dean & John Leahy, 2022. "Rationally Inattentive Behavior: Characterizing and Generalizing Shannon Entropy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(6), pages 1676-1715.
    3. Elliot Lipnowski & Laurent Mathevet & Dong Wei, 2020. "Attention Management," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 2(1), pages 17-32, March.
    4. Pak Hung Au & Mark Whitmeyer, 2023. "Attraction versus Persuasion: Information Provision in Search Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(1), pages 202-245.
    5. Matthew Gentzkow & Emir Kamenica, 2016. "A Rothschild-Stiglitz Approach to Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 597-601, May.
    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. Pietro Dall’Ara, 2025. "Persuading an Inattentive and Privately Informed Receiver," CSEF Working Papers 766, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    2. Emir Kamenica & Kyungmin Kim & Andriy Zapechelnyuk, 2021. "Bayesian persuasion and information design: perspectives and open issues," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(3), pages 701-704, October.
    3. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    4. Jeffrey Mensch & Doron Ravid, 2022. "Monopoly, Product Quality, and Flexible Learning," Papers 2202.09985, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    5. Xiaoyu Cheng, 2020. "Ambiguous Persuasion: An Ex-Ante Formulation," Papers 2010.05376, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2025.
    6. Matysková, Ludmila & Montes, Alfonso, 2023. "Bayesian persuasion with costly information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    7. Jiwoong Shin & Chi-Ying Wang, 2024. "The Role of Messenger in Advertising Content: Bayesian Persuasion Perspective," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 840-862, July.
    8. Wei, Dong, 2021. "Persuasion under costly learning," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    9. Alex Bloedel & Tommaso Denti & Luciano Pomatto, 2025. "Modeling information acquisition via f-divergence and duality," Papers 2510.03482, arXiv.org.
    10. Weijie Zhong, 2018. "The Indirect Cost of Information," Papers 1809.00697, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    11. Kocourek, Pavel & Steiner, Jakub & Stewart, Colin, 2024. "Boundedly rational demand," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 19(4), November.
    12. Pak Hung Au & Mark Whitmeyer, 2018. "Attraction versus Persuasion: Information Provision in Search Markets," Papers 1802.09396, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.
    13. Spyros Galanis & Christos A Ioannou & Stelios Kotronis, 2024. "Information Aggregation Under Ambiguity: Theory and Experimental Evidence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(6), pages 3423-3467.
    14. Evsyukova, Yulia & Innocenti, Federico & Lomys, Niccolò, 2024. "Information design with frame choice," ZEW Discussion Papers 24-084, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    15. Tommaso Denti & Doron Ravid, 2023. "Robust Predictions in Games with Rational Inattention," Papers 2306.09964, arXiv.org.
    16. Emerson Melo, 2022. "On the Distributional Robustness of Finite Rational Inattention Models," Papers 2208.03370, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    17. Zhou, Jidong, 2021. "Mixed bundling in oligopoly markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    18. Junjie Chen & Takuro Yamashita, 2025. "The Design of Monopoly Information Broker," Papers 2503.19539, arXiv.org.
    19. Ginzburg, Boris, 2019. "Optimal information censorship," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 377-385.
    20. Rumen Kostadinov, 2025. "Regret in Durable-Good Monopoly," Department of Economics Working Papers 2024-02, McMaster University.

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:2408.01250. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.