Aspiration-Weighted Influence

Siming Ye

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We study directed social influence when an influencer chooses from a richer menu than a constrained follower (decision maker, the DM). The DM selects from a feasible set, while the influencer displays a distribution over a superset that includes infeasible alternatives. We propose the Aspiration-Weighted Luce Model (AWLM): the DM forms a convex combination of her idiosyncratic Luce preferences within the feasible set and the influencer's distribution, then renormalizes this attempt target onto the feasible set. This renormalization generates an aspirational dampening effect: holding the influencer's within-feasible composition fixed and shifting exposure toward infeasible alternatives attenuates influence on feasible choices. We provide an axiomatic characterization based on proportional responses to shifts in feasible exposure and a unit-slope leverage restriction across different levels of feasible share. The model allows for point identification of influence strength and idiosyncratic preferences from two exposure regimes, yielding testable overidentifying restrictions for empirical application.

Date: 2026-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.05291 Latest version (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:arx:papers:2602.05291

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().