Attention Utility: Evidence from Individual Investors

Arbeitspapier

Attention utility is the hedonic pleasure or pain derived purely from paying attention to information. Using data on brokerage account logins by individual investors, we show that individuals devote disproportionate attention to already-known positive information about the performance of individual stocks within their portfolios. This aversion to paying attention to unfavorable information, through its effect on logins, has consequences for trading activity; it reduces trading after recent losses and increases trading after recent gains. Attention utility is distinct from models of belief-based utility and information aversion (in which information not sought is not fully known), and implies that the pleasure and pain of attending to known information may be important for individual behavior.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 8091

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Behavioral Finance: General‡ ; Behavioral Finance: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets‡ ; Household Saving; Personal Finance
• Thema: information utility ; attention ; login ; investor behavior

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Quispe-Torreblanca, Edika ; Gathergood, John ; Loewenstein, George ; Stewart, Neil
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (wo): Munich
• (wann): 2020

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/215093
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ