[Conference] ‘Strategic Ignorance and the Perceived Efficacy of Taking Action’
June 12th, 2025
2pm – 3pm in Village Building (E033) & on Zoom
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Speaker: Alice SOLDA – EM Lyon, France
abstract
We examine whether increasing perceived efficacy — the belief that one’s actions can mitigate adverse outcomes — reduces individuals’ tendency to ignore distressing information.
We first illustrate the role of perceived efficacy on information acquisition and information recall in a unified theoretical framework. We then present the results from an online experiment conducted in India.
Participants were given the choice to receive or forego information about the average loss in life expectancy due to air pollution in their district and were later asked to recall it.
We find that increasing perceived efficacy significantly improves information recall, particularly among participants with optimistic prior beliefs. We confirm this pattern when conducting the same experiment in the United States.
Our results highlight the role of the interplay between anticipatory and realized utility in explaining strategic ignorance.