Rules of Thumb and Attention Elasticities: Evidence from Under- and Overreaction to Taxes
通过在线购物实验，研究消费者对隐蔽销售税的反应，发现低金额时消费者使用不同经验法则导致反应不足或过度，高金额时则投入更多注意力减少偏差。
Abstract This paper tests costly attention models of consumers' misreaction to opaque taxes. We report an online shopping experiment that involves shrouded sales taxes that are exogenously varied within consumers over time. Some consumers systematically underreact to sales taxes whereas others systematically overreact, but higher stakes decrease both under- and overreaction. This is consistent with consumers using heterogeneous rules of thumb to compute the opaque tax when the stakes are low, but using costly mental effort at higher stakes. The results allow us to differentiate between various theories of limited attention. We also develop novel econometric techniques for quantifying individual differences.