Bose, Neha (2021) Essays in behavioural economics and language. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Continuing with the growing trend of language analysis within Economics, this thesis utilises text analysis tools in a novel evaluation of 3 distinct communication settings - small talk, climate change communication and political speeches.

The first chapter studies the implications of small talk, the most ubiquitous form of communication, for strategic decision making and the mechanism driving this. In a laboratory setting, after only 4-minutes of small talk, subjects developed impressions or beliefs about their partners' personalities, particularly extraver- sion, which affected behaviour in subsequent strategic interactions. Subjects were more inclined to cooperate in a public goods game when they believed their partners to be extraverted and found it harder to out-reason partners perceived as similar in type to themselves in a level-k reasoning task. Analysing the text used during the small talk chat revealed that talking more is associated with trait extraversion, which indeed provides an accurate forecast of type.

Next, the second chapter assesses climate change communication strategies to reduce planned meat intake. A pre-registered online randomised control trial with 1220 subjects, revealed shockingly low awareness about the environmental impact of meat. An evaluation of 6 information interventions showed that the most effective messages were based on scientific knowledge and efficacy salience i.e. concrete information about the consequences of a dietary shift. The study found support for a targeted messaging approach, by highlighting the health benefits of a plant-based diet for subjects with health concerns, and evidence of motivated reasoning related to meat consumption among frequent meat-eaters. Examining donations to a climate change charity and the text in the information recalled at the end of the study provided further insight into the interventions.

Lastly, the third chapter analyses U.S. Congressional speeches to build linguistic measures of the speakers' attitude towards immigrants. An \immigration corpus" containing 24,351 immigration policy-related speeches between 1990 and 2015 was compiled. The corpus was used to build two distinct measures of attitude towards immigrants, sentiment (or valence) and concreteness. The measures, particularly sentiment, displayed strict partisan polarisation and variation over time and across states in a manner consistent with the history of immigrant outcomes. A speaker-specific measure of sentiment was a significant predictor of voting behaviour on immigration bills. Applying a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling algorithm displayed trends in the diverse topics discussed in immigration speeches, such as rise in concern over national security post 9/11.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor J Political Science > JA Political science (General) P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Conversation analysis, Oral communication, Decision making, Extraversion, Intraversion, Communication in climatology, Meat industry and trade, Communication in politics, United States -- Emigration and immigration -- Government policy
Official Date:	June 2021
Dates:	Date Event June 2021 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Economics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Sgroi, Daniel ; Hills, Thomas ; Imbert, Clément (Postdoctoral researcher)
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	xiii, 158 leaves : illustrations
Language:	eng

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