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Do people really want to be informed? Ex-ante evaluations of information-campaign effectiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Romain Espinosa Open the ORCID record for Romain Espinosa [Opens in a new window]  and
Jan Stoop
Romain Espinosa*
Affiliation:
CNRS, CREM - Université de Rennes 1, Rennes, France Rennes School of Business, Rennes, France
Jan Stoop
Affiliation:
Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam, Netherlands
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

We develop a method to assess population knowledge about any given topic. We define, and rationalize, types of beliefs that form the ‘knowledge spectrum’. Using a sample of over 7000 UK residents, we estimate these beliefs with respect to three topics: an animal-based diet, alcohol consumption and immigration. We construct an information-campaign effectiveness index (ICEI) that predicts the success of an information campaign. Information resistance is greatest for animal-based diets, and the ICEI is highest for immigration. We test the predictive power of our ICEI by simulating information campaigns, which produces supportive evidence. Our method can be used by any government or company that wants to explore the success of an information campaign.

Keywords

Information campaignsInformation resistanceExperimentDietAlcoholImmigrationKnowledge spectrum

JEL classification

D10: General C90: General C70: General D1: Household Behavior and Family Economics
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 1131 - 1155
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-020-09692-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We would like to thank Georg Granic, Nicolas Treich, Andrew Clark, the editor and three anonymous referees for useful comments, as well as participants in various seminars (BETA Strasbourg, LESSAC Dijon, and CREM Rennes) and conferences (ASFEE 2019 Toulouse). We are also grateful to ERIM, NWO (Veni Grant 016.155.026, and Vidi Grant 195.061), ANR (Grant ANR-19-CE21-0005-01) for financial support.

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