Content sampling, household informedness, and the consumption of digital information goods

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

More is Less? Design Free Sample Strategy via Field Experiment and Double/Debiased Machine Learning

Free sample strategy has attracted considerable interest among practitioners and academics, it has been widely adopted in digital content industries (e.g., e-books, music, and videos). There are two issues that have been the continuous concerning and constantly optimized focus. How many free samples should be taken? How to design a personalized free samples strategy considering the contexts? To better understand these issues, we collaborated with an online reading platform in China to design and conduct a field experiment based on Construal Level Theory. The results showed an inverted U-shaped relationship between free sample quantity and consumer purchase decisions and also suggested when free chapters were offered, book popularity and quality were also found to positively moderate consumers’ purchase decisions. Moreover, by combining the causal forest (CF) technique and the double/debiased machine learning model (DML), we develop a personalized free sample strategy and provide managerial implications

Spillover Effects and Freemium Strategy in Mobile App Market

“Freemium” whereby a basic service level is provided free of charge but consumers are charged for more advanced features has become a popular business model for firms selling digital goods. However, it is not clear whether the launch of a free version helps or hurts the sale of an existing paid version. The free version may allow consumers to sample the product before making a purchase decision and subsequently increase downloads of the paid version but it may also cannibalize downloads of the paid version. We use a comprehensive data set on game apps from Apple's App Store that tracks the launch of both the paid and the free versions of individual apps on a daily level, to identify whether a freemium strategy stimulates or hurts downloads of an existing paid version. We estimate the spillover effects between the free version and the paid version of the same app accounting for the endogeneity of the launch of the free version as well as app-level product heterogeneity. We find that the launch of a free version increases downloads of the paid version of the same app and present multiple robustness checks for these results. We then present suggestive evidence that the results are due to consumers sampling the free version and rule out alternative explanations

Combining machine-based and econometrics methods for policy analytics insights

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centre @ Singapore Funding Initiativ

STUDYING DYNAMICS AND CHANGE WITH DIGITAL TRACE DATA: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Digital trace data offer promising opportunities to study dynamics and change of various socio-technical phenomena over time. While we see a surge of empirical and conceptual articles, we lack a systematic understanding of why, how, and when digital trace data are or can be used to study dynamics and change. In this article, we present the findings of a systematic literature review to uncover common approaches, motivations, findings, and general themes in the existing literature. We systematically reviewed 40 studies that were published in premium outlets in the information systems field. Our review sheds light on (1) underlying purposes of such studies, (2) utilized data sources, (3) research contexts, (4) socio-technical phenomena of interest, (5) applied analytical methods, and (6) measures that are being used. Building on our findings, we point to several implications for research and shed light on avenues to advance this field in the future

Essays on Expectations, Power and Social Security.

In chapters four and five – ‘On Power’ – Karen analyzes data on household consumption, labor supply and wages. Chapter four proposes a non-cooperative, theoretical model on how couples jointly decide on what to buy and how much to work. Applying this model to what households in the U.S. Consumer Expenditures Survey spend on children, she finds that in the majority of households the wife is the ‘Dictator’ in that she decides what to buy. Chapter five assesses wage rates of Dutch employees in the context of a specific type of employment protection: the term of notice, which is the period that an employer has to take into account before a worker can be fired. Karen finds that if an extra month is added to the term of notice, this increases wages by three percent. She explains this by the improved bargaining position of better protected employees.

CAPITALIZATION OF GREEN SPACE AND WATER QUALITY INTO RESIDENTIAL HOUSING VALUES

This thesis investigates how proximity to parks, historic district designations, and water quality are valued at residential housing prices. The first essay argues that the negative influences of parks and historic districts, if not noticed, could promote negative externalities and unincentivized investments. I find a negative impact on housing values for a close proximity to a park, suggesting disamenities in park features. When the boundary discontinuity and park amenities are considered, I find a positive valuation for a park. Overall, these results imply a mixed influence of parks on homeowners. From the historic district standpoint, I find a positive valuation of the local historic districts over the surrounding neighborhoods. The latter findings indicate that the benefits of locally designated areas outweigh the negative impacts. The second essay researches a probable lead risk in the water supply on the residential market. I argue strongly for the possibility of hidden-type information relative to lead in water supplies. I find that the influence of lead risk in their water supply is not statistically significant. The test for asymmetric information validates the expectation that homes in the relatively high lead-risk neighborhoods might not be informed of the level of lead-risk in their water supply