Topic
Availability cascade
About: Availability cascade is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3 publications have been published within this topic receiving 985 citations.
Papers
TL;DR: Kuran and Sunstein this paper analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards, including new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people's dependence on popular (mis)perceptions.
Abstract: An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs - activists who manipulate the content of public discourse - strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas. Their availability campaigns may yield social benefits, but sometimes they bring harm, which suggests a need for safeguards. Focusing on the role of mass pressures in the regulation of risks associated with production, consumption, and the environment, Professor Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards. Their proposals include new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people's dependence on popular (mis)perceptions.
770 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: Kuran and Sunstein this article analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards, including new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people's dependence on popular (mis)perceptions.
Abstract: An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs - activists who manipulate the content of public discourse - strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas. Their availability campaigns may yield social benefits, but sometimes they bring harm, which suggests a need for safeguards. Focusing on the role of mass pressures in the regulation of risks associated with production, consumption, and the environment, Professor Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards. Their proposals include new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people's dependence on popular (mis)perceptions.
538 citations
1 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the impact of availability cascades originating from two sources, the print and social media, in the context of technology-based entrepreneurship and explore the conditions under which the rise of an availability cascade influences the nascent entrepreneur's decision to incorporate a firm in the specific technology domain experiencing the cascade.
Abstract: Availability cascades are defined as disproportionately large increases in public discourse on certain events or topics which give rise to the ubiquitous use of the availability heuristic, thereby induce biases in decision-making. Empirical investigation into availability cascades in the social sciences is limited, especially in contexts where decisions are made in the face of considerable uncertainty. In this paper, we study the impact of availability cascades originating from two sources, the print and social media, in the context of technology-based entrepreneurship. First, we explore the conditions under which the rise of an availability cascade influences the nascent entrepreneur’s decision to incorporate a firm in the specific technology domain experiencing the cascade. Second, we test the effect of the availability cascade on the time taken for a nascent entrepreneur in the specific technology domain experiencing a cascade to receive first-round funding from a venture capitalist. Our results show t...
3 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2012 | 1 |
| 1999 | 1 |
| 1998 | 1 |