Markets for Attention: Will Pricing Email Help?
Speaker
Robert E. Kraut
Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
When
-
Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)
Description
Have spam, jokes, and cc’s got you down? Balancing the needs of information distributors and their audiences has grown harder in the age of the Internet. While the supply of information and communication demanding attention continues to increase, the supply of human attention is relatively fixed. Current approaches for balancing supply and demand don’t work well. Regulation is a blunt instrument. Filters are both too imprecise and elevate the needs of audiences over the needs of communication providers. On the other hand, economic markets are a social institution for efficiently balancing supply and demand of scarce commodities—in this case human attention. Charging a price for sending messages may discipline senders, deterring them from sending more than they are willing to pay for. Price may also help recipients estimate the value of a message before reading it. This talk reports the results of two laboratory experiments to explore the consequences of a pricing system for electronic mail. Charging postage for email causes senders to send fewer messages and be more selective about their targets. However, recipients did not use the postage paid by senders as a signal of importance. These studies suggest the markets for attention have potential, but their design needs more work.
Speaker's Bio
Robert E. Kraut is Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. He previously directed the Interpersonal Communications Research Program at Bellcore, was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and was a member of the faculty at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. He has broad interests in the design and social impact of computing. He has conducted empirical research on office automation and employment quality, technology and home-based employment, the communication needs of collaborating scientists, the design of information technology for small-group intellectual work, and the impact of national information networks on organizations and families. He has authored or edited five books on the social impact of information technology and over 60 research articles. His research on the psychological impact of the Internet has received international attention. His BA is from Lehigh University and his Ph.D. in social psychology is from Yale, 1973.