The Informational Role of Online Recommendations: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Guy Aridor, Gonçalves, Duarte, Daniel Kluver, Ruoyan Kong and Joseph Konstan

No 21584, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment on a movie-recommendation platform to investigate whether and how online recommendations influence consumption choices. Using a within-subjects design, our experiment measures the causal effect of recommendations on consumption and decomposes the relative importance of two economic mechanisms: expanding consumers' consideration sets and providing information about their idiosyncratic match value. We find that the informational component exerts a stronger influence -- recommendations shape consumer beliefs, which in turn drive consumption, particularly among less experienced consumers. Our findings and experimental design provide valuable insights for the economic evaluation and optimisation of online recommender systems.

Keywords: Online recommendations; Recommender system; Information acquisition; Field experiment; Platforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D47 D83 L15 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21584 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21584

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21584

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().