“ Attention, please ! ”

Abstract : We study the impact of attention grabbing in a framework of dynamic information acquisition and choice between different objects. When choice is binary, forcing attention to an item for a limited amount of time increases demand for this item and decreases demand for the other item, irrespectively of the agent’s attention strategy. With an arbitrary number of items, the same results hold provided the agent’s attention strategy satisfies a certain condition of independence of irrelevant alternatives.
Authors : Olivier Gossner (CNRS, CREST-École polytechnique, and London School of Economics), Jakub Steiner (U. of Zurich and CERGE-EI) and Colin Stewart (U. of Toronto).