Selective Exposure Reduces Voluntary Contributions: Experimental Evidence From the German Internet Panel

Federico Innocenti () and Linnéa Marie Rohde ()

CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series from University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany

Abstract: Can strategic information acquisition harm the provision of a public good? We investigate this question in an incentivized online experiment with a large and heterogeneous sample of the German population. The marginal returns of the public good are uncertain: it is either socially efficient to contribute or not. In the information treatment, participants can choose between two information sources with opposing biases. One source is more likely to report low marginal returns, whereas the other is more likely to report high marginal returns. Most participants select the source biased towards low marginal returns, independent of their prior beliefs. As a result, the information treatment significantly reduces contributions and increases free-riding. When contributing is socially efficient, the information treatment reduces social welfare by up to 5.3%. Moreover, social preferences affect information acquisition:socially-oriented participants are more likely to acquire information and to select the source that is biased towards low marginal returns. We corroborate our findings by showing that participants’ behavior in our experiment is consistent with their attitudes towards actual public goods.

Keywords: Experiment; Information Avoidance; Limited Attention; Media Bias; Media Pluralism; Public Good; Selective Exposure; German Internet Panel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D61 D83 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 95
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-exp and nep-soc
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