The motivation and consequence of fact-checking behavior: An experimental study

Valeria Bodishtianu, Dongfang Gaozhao and Pengfei Zhang

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-20

Abstract: In a series of online experiments, we asked people to evaluate news veracity and varied two experimental conditions: (1) the opportunity to receive fact-checking results and (2) bonus payment for accuracy. We tested three competing theories for fact-checking behavior: value of information (VoI), limited attention (LA), and motivated reasoning (MR). We find that monetary incentives do not promote fact-checking. Prior awareness of the news and perceived easiness in determining news authenticity significantly reduce fact-checking. Democrats are more likely to fact-check on the news aligning with Republicans’ ideology, suggesting a tendency to seek information when there is a need to defend one’s pre-existing belief. Overall, our results contradict VoI, show mixed evidence for MR, and support LA. When available, fact-checking consistently improves subjects’ accuracy in evaluating news veracity by over 40%, underscoring the importance of promoting fact-checking in curbing misinformation.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0323105 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 23105&type=printable (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:plo:pone00:0323105

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323105

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().