Habitual communication

Stage: Revision submitted at Experimental Economics

Authors: Konstantinos Ioannidis

Abstract: This paper studies habitual communication in a sender-receiver setting with information asymmetry. We investigate how habits formed in familiar environments affect communication in an unfamiliar environment. Using a controlled experiment with varying levels of preference alignment, we test two hypotheses: (i) whether familiarity with common-interest compared to conflicting-interest environments leads to more informative communication in an unfamiliar environment, and (ii) how reliance on communication habits varies based on the frequency of interacting in an unfamiliar environment. We find evidence for habitual communication only when the unfamiliar environment occurs rarely. Analysis of individual decisions provides suggestive evidence on the mechanisms.

Keywords: habits, strategic information transmission, communication, experiment

JEL codes: C92, D01, D83, D91

Presented at: 39^th European Economic Association Meeting (Rotterdam, 2024), 48^th SABE/IAREP Joint Conference (Dundee, 2024), 13^th Southern Europe Experimental Team´s Meeting (Malaga, 2024), Birmingham Behavioural Economics Workshop (Birmingham, 2022), CBESS-CeDEx-CREED Annual Meeting (online, 2021), Economic Science Association World Meeting (online, 2021), CBESS-CeDEx CREED Annual Meeting (online, 2020)