Logo of Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinLogo of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
edoc-Server
Open-Access-Publikationsserver der Humboldt-Universität
de|en
Header image: facade of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
View Item 
  • edoc-Server Home
  • Schriftenreihen und Sammelbände
  • Fakultäten und Institute der HU
  • Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät
  • Sonderforschungsbereich 649: Ökonomisches Risiko
  • View Item
  • edoc-Server Home
  • Schriftenreihen und Sammelbände
  • Fakultäten und Institute der HU
  • Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät
  • Sonderforschungsbereich 649: Ökonomisches Risiko
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.
All of edoc-ServerCommunity & CollectionTitleAuthorSubjectThis CollectionTitleAuthorSubject
PublishLoginRegisterHelp
StatisticsView Usage Statistics
All of edoc-ServerCommunity & CollectionTitleAuthorSubjectThis CollectionTitleAuthorSubject
PublishLoginRegisterHelp
StatisticsView Usage Statistics
View Item 
  • edoc-Server Home
  • Schriftenreihen und Sammelbände
  • Fakultäten und Institute der HU
  • Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät
  • Sonderforschungsbereich 649: Ökonomisches Risiko
  • View Item
  • edoc-Server Home
  • Schriftenreihen und Sammelbände
  • Fakultäten und Institute der HU
  • Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät
  • Sonderforschungsbereich 649: Ökonomisches Risiko
  • View Item
2014-10-12Buch DOI: 10.18452/4546
Boiling the frog optimally
an experiment on survivor curve shapes and internet revenue
Aperjis, Christina
Bosch-Rosa, Ciril
Friedman, Daniel
Huberman, Bernardo A.
When should a necessary inconvenience be introduced gradually, and when should it be imposed all at once? The question is crucial to web content providers, who in order to generate revenue must sooner or later introduce advertisements, subscription fees, or other inconveniences. Assuming that eventually people fully adapt to changes, the answer depends only on the shape of the "survivor curve" S(x), which represents the fraction of a user population willing to tolerate inconveniences of size x (Aperjis and Huberman 2011). We report a new laboratory experiment that, for the first time, estimates the shape of survivor curves in several different settings. We engage laboratory subjects in a series of six desirable activities, e.g., playing a video game, viewing a chosen video clip, or earning money by answering questions. For each activity we introduce a chosen level x 2 [xmin; xmax] of a particular inconvenience, and each subject chooses whether to tolerate the inconvenience or to switch to a bland activity for the remaining time. Our key finding is that, in general, the survivor curve is log-convex. Theory suggests therefore that introducing inconveniences all at once will generally be more profitable for web content providers.
Files in this item
Thumbnail
58.pdf — Adobe PDF — 931.0 Kb
MD5: 1cf9f42ced5d22e5ae34183fd53a482f
Cite
BibTeX
EndNote
RIS
InCopyright
Details
DINI-Zertifikat 2019OpenAIRE validatedORCID Consortium
Imprint Policy Contact Data Privacy Statement
A service of University Library and Computer and Media Service
© Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
 
DOI
10.18452/4546
Permanent URL
https://doi.org/10.18452/4546
HTML
<a href="https://doi.org/10.18452/4546">https://doi.org/10.18452/4546</a>