{"title":"Recommender Systems as Mechanisms for Social Learning","authors":"Yeon-Koo Che, Johannes Hörner","doi":"10.1093/QJE/QJX044","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article studies how a recommender system may incentivize users to learn about a product collaboratively. To improve the incentives for early exploration, the optimal design trades off fully transparent disclosure by selectively overrecommending the product (or “spamming”) to a fraction of users. Under the optimal scheme, the designer spams very little on a product immediately after its release but gradually increases its frequency; she stops it altogether when she becomes sufficiently pessimistic about the product. The recommender’s product research and intrinsic/naive users “seed” incentives for user exploration and determine the speed and trajectory of social learning. Potential applications for various Internet recommendation platforms and implications for review/ratings inflation are discussed.","PeriodicalId":48470,"journal":{"name":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":11.1000,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/QJE/QJX044","citationCount":"95","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Quarterly Journal of Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/QJE/QJX044","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 95
Abstract
This article studies how a recommender system may incentivize users to learn about a product collaboratively. To improve the incentives for early exploration, the optimal design trades off fully transparent disclosure by selectively overrecommending the product (or “spamming”) to a fraction of users. Under the optimal scheme, the designer spams very little on a product immediately after its release but gradually increases its frequency; she stops it altogether when she becomes sufficiently pessimistic about the product. The recommender’s product research and intrinsic/naive users “seed” incentives for user exploration and determine the speed and trajectory of social learning. Potential applications for various Internet recommendation platforms and implications for review/ratings inflation are discussed.
期刊介绍:
The Quarterly Journal of Economics stands as the oldest professional journal of economics in the English language. Published under the editorial guidance of Harvard University's Department of Economics, it comprehensively covers all aspects of the field. Esteemed by professional and academic economists as well as students worldwide, QJE holds unparalleled value in the economic discourse.