To Buy or Not to Buy? An Experimental Study of Consumer Boycotts in Retail Markets
通过实验研究竞争性零售市场中消费者如何应对成本突然上升，发现消费者抵制行为频繁但无法压低市场价格，反而降低市场效率，其作用更像是惩罚企业的不公平涨价。
We investigate experimentally how firms and consumers react to a sudden cost increase in a competitive retail market. We compare two conditions that exclusively differ with respect to how difficult it is to organize and enforce boycotts. We find that cost increases translate into sudden price increases, and that consumer boycotts are frequent in response. However, consumer boycotts are unsuccessful in holding down market prices even if collective action problems are completely eliminated. While consumer boycotts do not increase consumer rent, they reduce market efficiency. Consumer boycotts apparently serve to punish firms for seemingly unfair price increases.