Strategic Diffusion of Information and Preference Manipulation

Abstract

This paper bridges the existing gap between the empirical consumer choice literature and the theoretical structures built to account for information manipulation between a sender and a decision maker. The authors define a theoretical structure that allows for the analysis of preference manipulation in multiattribute environments via information multifunctions when the information transmitted is verifiable. A series of examples are provided that illustrate numerically the behaviour and validity of this theoretical structure. A concrete application of this theoretical framework is the possibility for an information sender to induce any predetermined preference relation on a decision maker, and, in particular, how lexicographic preferences can be induced starting from non-lexicographic additive ones.