The power of social cues in the battle for attention: Evidence from an online platform for scholarly commentary |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point, 2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia;2. Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology (BEST), Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point, 2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia;3. CREMA, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland;1. School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point, 2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia;2. Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology (BEST), Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point, 2 George St, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia;3. CREMA, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland;1. Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC), Córdoba, Spain;2. Joint Research Unit Knowledge Transfer and Innovation, (UCO-CSIC), Córdoba, Spain;1. Laboratory for Studies in Research Evaluation, at the Institute for System Analysis and Computer Science (IASI-CNR), National Research Council of Italy, Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi e Informatica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Via dei Taurini 19, 00185, Roma, Italy;2. University of Rome “Tor Vergata” – Italy, Laboratory for Studies in Research Evaluation (IASI-CNR), Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Impresa, Università degli Studi di Roma, “Tor Vergata”, Via del Politecnico 1, 00133, Roma, Italy;3. Research Value s.r.l., Via Michelangelo Tilli 39, 00156, Roma, Italy;1. Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 21 Nanyang Link, 637371, Singapore;2. School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore;3. School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, 81 Nanyang Dr, 637458, Singapore;4. Complexity Institute, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore;1. Department of Economics, University of Piraeus, Karaoli & Dimitriou 80, Piraeus 18534, Greece;2. Athens University of Economics and Business, 76 Patission St., Athens 10434, Greece;3. SERC, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, WC2A 2AE, London, UK;1. Faculty of Information Science, KIM IL SUNG University, Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK);2. School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China |
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| Abstract: | Because humans have limited resources and capacities to digest and comprehend the unprecedented amount of information bombarding today’s world, human attention is a scarce resource and the problem of information overload is becoming increasingly serious. In this study we aim to contribute to an understanding of how humans make decisions about the value of complex sources of information, specifically in the context of online scholarly platforms, online news, and social media. We thus use almost 5000 research-based VoxEU texts, together with the corresponding authors’ characteristics, to test whether, as an evolutionary approach would suggest, author success, skills, and prestige serve as strong cues in readers’ attentional decisions, by analyzing reading, sharing, and searching behaviors. In addition to finding strong support for this assumption, we also show that readers respond to such visual cues as article title, number of words in the abstract, and/or text content, with a clear favoring of figures over tables. |
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| Keywords: | Attention Information overload Heuristics Prestige Readership |
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