Essays on limited attention in information-rich environments

Abstract

If information is abundant, the resource that in turn becomes scarce and in need of allocation is what information consumes – the attention of its recipients. Drawing from recent advances in behavioural decision theory, this thesis presents three essays on issues relating to limited attention in information-rich environments. In the first essay, we attempt to explain recent empirical discrepancies suggesting that despite low material costs, consumers continue to search for a very narrow number of alternatives in online contexts. We appeal to the idea of a general economy of attention and suggest that this discrepancy can be understood through the lens of a fundamental attention allocation problem. In the second essay, we build on this analysis and ask whether individuals that prioritise the expansion of alternatives in their decision making process suffer a decline in their ability to exercise deliberative judgement. We draw on the psychological literature on heuristics and biases and demonstrate that individuals attempting to ‘behaviourally maximise’ are more susceptible to rudimentary judgemental fallacies as compared to decision makers that directly confront their own cognitive limitations. Finally, the third essay, draws on these insights and investigates the interplay between selective attention, enduring personal dispositions and task complexity on the facility with which individuals can deploy simplifying selection policies when choosing between items within a bundle. We demonstrate that alongside the information structure characterising task environments, individuals’ capacity to efficiently allocate attention has implications on their ability to simplify the problem space within contexts where multiple conflicting objectives need to be taken into account and counterbalanced.

Date of Award	3 Jan 2020
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Nadia Papamichail (Supervisor)