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Persuasive Communication in Social Service Operations

Estrada Rodriguez, Arturo; Ibrahim, Rouba; Kremer, Mirko; (2023) Persuasive Communication in Social Service Operations. SSRN Green open access

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Abstract

We study the effectiveness of information design as a managerial lever to mitigate the overuse of critical resources in congestion-prone social service systems. Leveraging the service provider’s informational advantage about relevant aspects of the system, effective communication requires the sharing of carefully curated information to persuade low-need customers to forego service for the benefit of customers with higher service needs. To study whether effective communication can arise in equilibrium, we design controlled laboratory experiments to test the predictions of a queueing-game theoretic model that endogenizes the implementation of information-sharing policies. Our main result is that communication increases social welfare even when the service provider lacks the ability to formally commit to their information policy (as usually is the case in practical settings), i.e., under conditions where standard theory predicts that communication fails because it lacks credibility and thus fails to affect customer behaviour.

Type: Working / discussion paper
Title: Persuasive Communication in Social Service Operations
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4672269
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4672269
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: communication, persuasion, queueing, commitment, noisy decision-making, lying aversion
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > UCL School of Management
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10186224
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