Strategic Ignorance and Perceived Control

Anca Balietti, Angelika Budjan, Tillmann Eymess and Alice Solda

No 730, Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Information can trigger unpleasant emotions. As a result, individuals might be tempted to willfully ignore it. We experimentally investigate whether increasing perceived control can mitigate strategic ignorance. Participants from India were presented with a choice to receive information about the health risk associated with air pollution and later asked to recall it. We find that perceived control leads to a substantial improvement in information retention. Moreover, perceived control mostly benefits optimists, who show both a reduction in information avoidance and an increase in information retention. This latter result is confirmed with a US sample. A theoretical framework rationalizes these findings.

Keywords: air pollution; information avoidance; information retention; perceived control; motivated cognition; Luftverschmutzung (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-08-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-env and nep-exp
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