Planned vs. Actual Attention

Mauricio Ribeiro, Ala Avoyan, Andrew Schotter, Elizabeth Schotter, Mehrdad Vaziri, Minghao Zou

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
103 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

People often need to plan how to allocate their attention across different tasks. In this paper, we run two experiments to study a stylized version of this attention-allocation problem between strategic tasks. More specifically, we present subjects with pairs of 2 × 2 games, and for each pair, we give them 10 seconds to decide how they would split a fixed time budget between the two games. Then, subjects play both games without time constraints, and we use eye-tracking to estimate the fraction of time they spend on each game. We find that subjects’ planned and actual attention allocation differ and identify the determinants of this mismatch. Further, we argue that misallocations can be relevant in games in which a player’s strategy choice is sensitive to the time taken to reach a decision.
Original languageEnglish
JournalManagement Science
Early online date20 Jul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 20 Jul 2023

Research Groups and Themes

  • ECON Microeconomic Theory

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