American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Observational Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Field Experiment
American Economic Review
vol. 99,
no. 3, June 2009
(pp. 864–82)
Abstract
We report results from a randomized natural field experiment conducted in a restaurant dining setting to distinguish the observational learning effect from the saliency effect. We find that, when customers are given ranking information of the five most popular dishes, the demand for those dishes increases by 13 to 20 percent. We do not find a significant saliency effect. We also find modest evidence that the observational learning effects are stronger among infrequent customers, and that dining satisfaction is increased when customers are presented with the information of the top five dishes, but not when presented with only names of some sample dishes. (JEL C93, D83)Citation
Cai, Hongbin, Yuyu Chen, and Hanming Fang. 2009. "Observational Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Field Experiment." American Economic Review, 99 (3): 864–82. DOI: 10.1257/aer.99.3.864Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C93 Field Experiments
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief