Demand for information by gender: An experimental study

Karmini Sharma and Alessandro Castagnetti

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 207, issue C, 172-202

Abstract: We study preferences for seeking information about one’s own ability within a male-typed task. Using a lab experiment, we study how women and men might differ in their preferences for information and how these preferences are affected by features of the information environment. We consider a setting where men and women solve a male-typed task, and then choose to receive information about their performance from less or more informative feedback structures. We then vary the costs and benefits of seeking the more informative feedback. In a between-subjects experiment, we make the informative feedback i) private to the subject ii) public iii) subjectively judgemental, and iv) strategic. We find that women are less likely to opt for more informative feedback than men by about 20 p.p. in the first three treatments but this gap vanishes in the strategic treatment. Interestingly, however, this is driven entirely by men who change their behaviour due to strategic incentives. Our results have implications for how men and women learn differently in male-typed domains.

Keywords: Gender; Information acquisition; Updating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122004553
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jeborg:v:207:y:2023:i:c:p:172-202

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.12.012

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().