 Costly verification and commitment in persuasionJunya Zhou Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2023, vol. 212, issue C, 1100-1142 Abstract: Misrepresentation of information is ubiquitous in communication, while verification is often costly. This paper studies the role of verification in persuasion and its interaction with commitment in a Bayesian persuasion framework in which the sender is not fully bound by the committed plan. Both theoretically and experimentally, we demonstrate that making verification easier can significantly improve information transmission when commitment is low, but its effect is limited when commitment is high. However, empirically receivers do not respond to commitment as strongly as predicted by theory, which is consistent with base-rate neglect and conservatism. On the other hand, senders generally anticipate receivers’ actions and best respond to the empirical behavior of receivers. Verification is instrumental in improving information transmission when the cost is not high, and commitment is low. Keywords: Bayesian persuasion; Partial commitment; Costly verification; Conservatism; Base-rate neglect (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:212:y:2023:i:c:p:1100-1142 DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.06.005 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 |
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