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As a young boy in York, Nebraska, Stanford economist Robert Wilson and his friends would sometimes go watch the Saturday morning cattle auctions held near his childhood home and watch the farm animals be sold off, one by one.

Robert Wilson and Paul Milgrom on the morning of Oct. 12, the day they received the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (Image credit: Andrew Brodhead)

“Us kids would just go over and sit in the bleachers. A cow would be pulled in and stand there while an oral, ascending auction of subsequent bids was conducted until the auctioneer declared the cow sold,” recalled Wilson, whose scholarship in auction theory and design earned him and his Stanford colleague and former graduate student Paul Milgrom the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Wilson didn’t know it then, but the types of auctions he witnessed as a child are what economists call an English auction. These are the kinds of auctions most of us are familiar with, as they’re used to sell everything from artwork and antiques to memorabilia, but they’re only one among many auction designs that Wilson and Milgrom studied.

Together, the pair have explored how different auction designs can yield different outcomes, and specifically, the role information – or lack thereof – can play in shaping a buyer’s bidding strategy.

For example, in a cattle auction, each buyer knows how much beef they may get from a steer – they know if they fatten him up they could get somewhere between 400 to 500 pounds of retail cuts. But suppose there is great uncertainty about the price of beef. How much buck should the buyer bid for his bovine then?

For Wilson, that’s where things can get interesting and, in some cases, problematic.

“If different bidders have different information about what that price will be, then the person that overestimates the value the most will tend to win,” he said. In other words, the winning bidder loses out and gets stuck paying more than the item is actually worth.

This phenomenon is what economists call the winner’s curse. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Wilson examined how the winner’s curse unfolded. He also learned that there are some instances where it makes buyers risk-averse: they are so worried by it that they end up bidding less than what they would if they knew the item’s true value.

It was while consulting with the Department of Interior on their auctions for mineral extraction rights and later, directly with oil companies, that Wilson saw firsthand some of the problems bidders encountered: While oil companies may have survey estimates for how much oil and gas could be extracted in a certain area, no one is entirely certain how much is below ground.

“To be inside the company and see how they did it was actually startling because I had no idea how bad their information was,” Wilson recalled. Furthermore, the future price of oil and gas is also incredibly volatile, he noted.

Here, Wilson was able to apply economic theory to practice. He honed the concept of common value, known also as the mineral-rights model: while each bidder has his or her own private estimates of an item’s value, in the end, it is worth the same for everyone. In a common-value setting, each bid provides a glimpse into what the item is worth, and as the auction proceeds, bidders may adjust their estimates.

Up until that point, scholarship on auction theory had focused on private value models, that is, what an item is worth depends solely on the bidder’s assessment. Wilson’s contribution allowed auction theory to be applied in new settings and later, Milgrom enriched the model further to allow for both common and private values.

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the pair for improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats.

Designing new auctions

When the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wanted a new way to allocate licenses to the broadcast spectrum used for wireless communications, they reached out to Milgrom and Wilson for ideas.

It was 1993 and by that time, Milgrom, who came to study auctions at Stanford because of Wilson, was a professor himself. Milgrom had already conducted his own work in auction theory and design, including the discovery that English auctions – where bidding starts low and prices go up – are better at mitigating the winner’s curse than Dutch auctions – where bidding starts high and prices go down. The reason is because bidders gain more information about an item’s value during the bidding process and the more information bidders have about an object’s value, the higher the revenue, Milgrom found.

So, the FCC approached the pair to see if they could find a system that could deal with the problems they faced. For example, say a mobile phone carrier wanted coverage in California, they would have to buy licenses in both Southern and Northern California. But in some of the auction proposals that were put forth, there was a risk that a company could initially spend so much money on the Southern California license that they couldn’t afford the Northern California license later in the auction. That’s because the Southern and the Northern California licenses are worth more in combination than individually.

“In the initial proposals that were made to the FCC, they were just going to auction licenses off like a cattle auction,” Wilson recalled. “You bring in the first license, and da da da – boom, it’s sold and now you go next to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. But that can make it really difficult to assemble a good package of licenses to get the kind of coverage that you want.”

Milgrom and Wilson’s solution was elegant: What if the auction sold licenses all at once?

In their novel design – called the simultaneous multiple round auctions (SMRA) – all items are put up for sale at once and buyers can bid on any subset of items. Bidding is done in rounds where bidders discreetly place their bids at the same time. At the end of each round, all bids are revealed, providing bidders with information about the license’s value while ensuring that the license goes to whoever values it the most.

Because bidding is done in rounds, it mitigates the risk of “winner’s curse.” Bidders also have time to reevaluate their strategies with any new insights they’ve gleaned from other buyers in the previous round.

In order to discourage bidders from sitting out a round, the auction also imposes an “activity rule” where bidders must make credible bids every round. Penalties for withdrawing a bid were also imposed to help ensure auctions ran smoothly and fairly. Auctions ended when no new bids are made on any of the items. The FCC adopted Milgrom and Wilson’s design almost in its entirety.

Their novel format became the basis for many other spectrum auctions across the world. Canada, Finland, Germany, India, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. have all used different versions of it.

Milgrom has also advanced other auction designs that have been adopted by other sectors. For example, electricity companies have used auctions to sell power during peak periods. Even fishing industries have turned to auctions as a way to reallocate fishing quotas – in New South Wales when fisherman wanted to leave the industry, they didn’t want to sell one or two rights to catch fish, they wanted to sell all their rights as a bundle, Milgrom pointed out.

“In general, there are many auctions that occur in the world where there are lots of things interacting and the auction can’t be just a one-by-one purchase or sale of any individual piece. It has to take into account how they interact in the whole system,” Milgrom said.

Auctions as collaboration

While there are other ways to allocate goods, like lotteries, it is not a guarantee it will go to people who need it most. Applications, or “beauty contests,” are another method where participants make their case for why they are deserving, but those can be susceptible to corporate lobbying and interests – which happened to the FCC prior to their adoption of the SMRA method.

If designed correctly, auctions can distribute resources fairly, according to Wilson and Milgrom.

“People tend to have the impression that auctions are all about competition, but a lot of what we also study is how to design the rules to get an efficient, cooperative outcome,” said Wilson.

An efficient outcome, according to economists, is one that maximizes the total welfare of those who are affected by a decision. In an auction, this includes not just the bidders themselves but also the auctioneer and other parties who might be affected by the auction’s outcome.

Take the distribution of medical supplies, for example, an issue that was important at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when there was serious concern among hospitals, patients and the general public alike about the perceived shortage in respirators and other equipment.

“Well there was not a shortage in respirators,” said Milgrom. “The problem was that places in California were stockpiling respirators to make sure we had them when we needed them. But New York needs them today, we need them tomorrow. There is no reason why we can’t both have them, provided we have a good system for trading.”

And the trading doesn’t have to involve money, Milgrom noted. “It could be a system that incorporates trading rights to use respirators tomorrow for rights to use respirators today – so that everyone is on an equal footing.”

Economists call these matching markets – a theory advanced famously by Alvin Roth, another Stanford economist and former disciple of Wilson’s – who used this mathematical approach to match organ donors with recipients and medical residents with hospitals. This work earned Roth the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2012 .

‘What’s the magic?’

Indeed, three of Wilson’s students have won the Nobel award: Roth, Milgrom and Bengt Holmstrom, who now teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded the Nobel in 2016 for his work on contract design.

It was through Holmstrom that Milgrom came to study under Wilson. In the 1970s, Milgrom and Holmstrom were classmates at Stanford, so when Milgrom decided to pursue his PhD, he asked Holmstrom for advice.

“He said, ‘you should get Bob Wilson to be your advisor,’” Milgrom recalled. To get Wilson’s attention, Milgrom wrote a term paper on auction theory and the rest, as they say, is history.

So what makes Wilson such a special, sought-after mentor and, given the track record of his students’ accomplishments, a successful one at that?

“Part of that answer is that he was encouraging and he has great taste in problems. He would discourage us from working on things that were either intractable or didn’t matter,” Milgrom said. He recalled how Wilson would ask him, “‘Why would you even do that? Suppose you solve that problem, who is going to care?’”

Combining application with foundational research has been a defining feature of Wilson’s own career.

Both Wilson and Milgrom’s scholarship have questioned widely held beliefs, including some of the most fundamental principles of economics – like the model of supply and demand. This long-established theory posits that the more goods and services there are in the market, the lower its value is and vice versa, the smaller the amount, the higher the price.

“But how did that happen, what was the magic?” asked Milgrom.

Milgrom and Wilson have both sought out more fundamental explanations why. Both have used game theory to study the strategic interactions among decision-makers to provide foundations for the model of supply and demand in markets, including auctions.

“It’s true, in an auction maybe there is a demand curve and a supply curve and they intersect and that’s the price but how did that come about? It came about through the bidding strategies of the participants and the auction design and then we can question whether the price formation is incorporating the information in the right way,” Wilson said.

As Wilson added further, scholarship is about advancing knowledge beyond the established set of concepts, research methods and theories that are foundational in an academic field. These paradigms, Wilson said, “are very dangerous because they make you blind to what’s going on inside. The thing to do is to go beyond the standard paradigm and look inside to what is really going on in greater detail.”

  • DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.172650
  • Corpus ID: 15932161

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Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Economics Oct 29, 2020

What is “auction theory,” and what kinds of questions can it answer, the recent nobel put the field of auction theory in the spotlight. an economist explains how it works, using his own research as a guide..

Paul Milgrom

Joshua Mollner

Yevgenia Nayberg

Auction theory studies different auction formats and attempts to predict how people will behave in them. The field is having its moment in the spotlight.

The attention stems from the recent awarding of the Nobel in economics to two pioneers of auction theory research, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, both at Stanford University. (Milgrom is a former Kellogg School professor.) Their work is both theoretical and practical: in the 1990s the Federal Communications Commission used their research to create a new way of auctioning off radio frequencies, resulting in billions of dollars in sales.

Kellogg’s Joshua Mollner started collaborating with Milgrom while Mollner was a Ph.D. student at Stanford. The two have a new paper out on auction theory. Kellogg Insight talked with Mollner, an associate professor of managerial economics and decision sciences, about the research and the Nobel announcement.

KELLOGG INSIGHT: What did you set out to learn in your new paper?

We were motivated by the observation that in certain situations, existing theory doesn’t make very sharp predictions about how people will behave. We had an intuition for how we could develop a new theory that would sharpen those predictions.

The gold standard for making predictions about how people will play an economic game—for example, an auction—is something that’s called Nash equilibrium. What Nash equilibrium says, basically, is that everyone has to be using a strategy that allows them to do as well as they can provided that their opponents play as they’re supposed to be playing.

But in some settings, and particularly some auctions, there’s a problem because sometimes there can be many Nash equilibria. In other words, Nash equilibrium predicts many possible outcomes. And that might be dissatisfying because you might want just a single prediction or at least a small set of predictions.

In response, economists have developed rules, called “equilibrium refinements,” that allow you to eliminate some of these less plausible Nash equilibria so that you end up with a smaller set of predictions.

That’s where our paper fits in. We propose a new refinement, which we call “extended proper equilibrium.”

KI: Your refinement looks at the issue of “trembles,” meaning a player may do something unexpected—perhaps unintentionally, as if their hand trembled. Can you explain how that factors in?

In some games, many of the strategies I could adopt might be “tied” in the sense that each allows me to do as well as I can, given what I expect my opponents to do.

“When you do a search query on Google or really any other search engine, the ads that you see on the top or on the side are the result of an auction that’s taking place behind the scenes.” — Joshua Mollner

But should I really be equally happy with any of those strategies? Maybe I should break that tie by thinking about the possibility that the other players don’t play as I expect them to play. Maybe with some small probability, another player trembles and does something that they weren’t supposed to do.

So, supposing that other players do tremble, what types of trembles should I expect? And that’s where our refinement comes in.

KI: Can you give an example of what this would look like?

The simplest example would be one where I’m playing a game against two opponents. Suppose that if I expect opponent #1 to tremble, then I prefer option A, whereas if I expect opponent #2 to tremble, then I prefer option B. To figure out what my best option is, what I really need to know is who’s more likely to tremble, opponent #1 or opponent #2?

It turns out that most previous refinements in the literature have basically nothing to say on that question. Our contribution is to develop a new refinement that does have something to say in some situations.

KI: What did you draw on for your idea for a new refinement?

We start with a previous equilibrium refinement from the literature. It was developed in the ’80s by Roger Myerson , who is also a Nobel laureate (and former Kellogg faculty member). He calls his refinement “proper equilibrium.” That concept has something to say about within-player comparisons of trembling: about whether a single opponent is more likely to make one type of mistake or another type of mistake. We find a way to extend that logic to across-player comparisons. That’s why we call our refinement “extended proper equilibrium.” That then allows us to make sharper predictions than the original proper equilibrium does.

KI: How does this apply to real-life auctions?

Let me give you one example. When you do a search query on Google or really any other search engine, the ads that you see on the top or on the side are the result of an auction that’s taking place behind the scenes. The most commonly used auction format there is called the “generalized second-price auction.”

Think about multiple ad positions on the page and multiple bidders. The ad position at the top of the page is the most valuable because it’s the most visible, and so it should attract the most clicks. As we go further down the page, ads are going to attract fewer clicks. Each bidder is going to submit the maximum amount that they’re willing to pay per click.

The top ad position goes to the highest bidder, but their per-click payment is not their own bid. It’s the bid of the second-highest bidder. And then the second ad position goes to the second-highest bidder, whose per-click payment is the third-highest bid, and so on.

KI: Why are they not paying their own bid?

In the olden days of search advertising, that was exactly what happened. But there was a problem with it. Let’s say I’m the highest bidder and you’re the second highest bidder, and I’m bidding $10 more than you are. If I’m paying my own bid, I have an incentive then to try to reduce my bid until I’m just barely above where you were. But once that happens, you might say, “Well, now I can outbid Josh and get that first position for very cheap.” At that point, we might keep outbidding each other until the first position becomes so expensive that you decide you’d be better off winning only the second position. So you might drop your bid back down to $10 below mine, starting the cycle all over again.

Search engines were seeing this cycling behavior, where bidding behavior wasn’t settling down. To eliminate it, they went to this design where now I can feel free to bid $10 higher than you, because whatever happens, I get the same outcome as if I were bidding just a single cent higher than you.

Google came up with this system, and now it’s the standard in the industry. That’s why economists are interested, because it’s economically important.

KI: What is it that economists are trying to understand exactly?

We want to predict how bidders are going to behave. Let’s suppose that I’m one of three bidders in one of these auctions, and I’m pretty sure that there’s going to be one bidder who will bid super high and another bidder who will bid very low. Probably my best move is to bid some number in the middle. If I wanted to win that first position, I’d have to outbid this really high bidder, which would be expensive. And I may as well outbid the low bidder because I can do so for cheap. So I’m going to bid some number in the middle. But then the question is: Which number in the middle?

It’s a very important question for the auctioneer, like Google, because my bid is going to set the price that the highest bidder pays, which will largely dictate the revenue of the auction.

KI: How does your refinement help answer this question?

If neither opponent trembles, then I’m indifferent among all these different bid amounts in the middle. But what if one of these other bidders trembles? What if one of them bids not exactly as I expect them to bid, even with just some small probability? If that is possible, then I might no longer be indifferent among all of these bids. Which of those bids I would prefer will depend on the trembles I expect. Is it more likely that the high bidder trembles or that the low bidder trembles—and if they do tremble, what alternative bids are they most likely to tremble to?

So there are these across-bidder comparisons that I need to make. Our refinement speaks to those comparisons and is going to help pin down a narrower range of possible bids that I, as this middle bidder, might make.

KI: How does this narrower range, the sharper prediction, benefit a search engine like Google?

There are other auction formats in the economics literature that in principle could also be used here. Then a relevant question for Google would be: Where is revenue going to be highest—if it sticks with this auction format that it’s using, or if it switches to a different auction format?

In order to do that comparison, Google would need a way to predict how a given set of bidders would bid in the generalized second-price auction and also how they would bid in another format. Our theory helps with the first half of that.

KI: Your coauthor, Paul Milgrom, just won the Nobel for his work on auction theory. He was originally your thesis advisor. How did you start working together?

I first saw him when I was a student in one of his classes. I was very impressed by the way he thinks, the way he explains things so clearly, and his contagious enthusiasm for, to be honest, for really nerdy stuff.

I started working for him as a research assistant. Then we started working on some projects together, and ultimately, he became my advisor.

KI: What has it been like recently to see auction theory in the news?

I’m really excited about it, and I’m very happy for Paul. What I think is really cool about Paul’s work and also that of Bob Wilson, his cowinner, is that it’s this brilliant theory, but it’s also incredibly practical. They’ve both been involved in designing auctions that have been used to allocate billions of dollars of radio spectrum. I think that mixture of brilliant theory and practical relevance is super rare and super special.

Associate Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences

About the Writer Emily Stone is the senior editor at Kellogg Insight.

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  • Putting Auction Theory to Work

Putting Auction Theory to Work

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This book provides a comprehensive introduction to modern auction theory and its important new applications. It is written by a leading economic theorist whose suggestions guided the creation of the new spectrum auction designs. Aimed at graduate students and professionals in economics, the book gives the most up-to-date treatments of both traditional theories of 'optimal auctions' and newer theories of multi-unit auctions and package auctions, and shows by example how these theories are used. The analysis explores the limitations of prominent older designs, such as the Vickrey auction design, and evaluates the practical responses to those limitations. It explores the tension between the traditional theory of auctions with a fixed set of bidders, in which the seller seeks to squeeze as much revenue as possible from the fixed set, and the theory of auctions with endogenous entry, in which bidder profits must be respected to encourage participation.

‘Paul Milgrom has combined fundamental work in economic theory and, in particular, the theory of auctions, with extensive practical participation in the auctions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This book is a brilliant synthesis of his own and others’ contributions to the field. The impact of practical problems on the need for theory is thoroughly exemplified. The exposition of the theory has that complete ease only achievable through complete mastery and intense work.’

Kenneth Arrow - Nobel Laureate, Stanford University

‘One of the recent revolutions in economics is an understanding that markets do not automatically work well. Design matters, and the Federal communications commission spectrum auction design that Milgrom pioneered kicked off a new era of market design using economic theory to make real markets work better. Now Milgrom makes the underlying ideas and theories more widely accessible - so other markets too will reap the benefits of these insights.’

Joseph Stiglitz - Nobel Laureate, Columbia University

‘Whether you are an expert on auction theory or just a novice curious about how auction theory works, you will be in for a marvelous journey. There’s no one better at capturing the essence and generality of economic ideas than Paul Milgrom. He’s a master in a class of his own.’

Bengt Holmstrom - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

‘Milgrom's ideas were critical to helping the FCC design its multi-billion dollar spectrum auctions. His thoughtful economic reasoning and attention to practical detail made the auctions successful. Whether you are seeking careful theorizing or practical insights, Milgrom’s work is the first place to look.’

Reed Hundt - Former Chair, Federal Communications Commission

‘In Paul Milgrom’s hands, auction theory has become the great culmination of game theory and economics of information. Here elegant mathematics meets practical applications and yields deep insights into the general theory of markets. Milgrom’s book will be the definitive reference in auction theory for decades to come.’

Roger Myerson - University of Chicago

‘Market design is one of the most exciting developments in contemporary economics and game theory, and who can resist a master class from one of the giants of the field?’

Al Roth - Harvard University

‘Paul Milgrom is universally acclaimed as one of the outstanding economic theorists of our generation. He has turned auction theory into the crucial tool for modern market design. His book will be an essential resource for theorists and practitioners alike.’

Paul Klemperer - University of Oxford

‘No one is better qualified than Paul Milgrom to give an up-to-date and lucid guide to the accomplishments of auction theory. Both rigorous and enjoyable to read, this exciting book is a must for graduate students and auction designers.’

Jean Tirole - Institut d'Economie Industrielle, Toulouse, France

'I recommend this book to all graduate or advanced graduate students and researchers with an interest in auction theory. It is a must for auction designers. it is only a matter of time before Milgrom's book becomes part of the standard toolkit for both theorists and practioners alike. Jean Tirole is right when he says that no one is better qualified than Paul Milgrom to give an up-to-date and lucid journey through the fascinating landscape of auction theory.'

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Frontmatter pp i-vi

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Contents pp vii-x

Preface pp xi-xiv, foreword by evan kwerel pp xv-xxii.

  • By Evan Kwerel

PUTTING AUCTION THEORY TO WORK pp xxiii-xxiv

1 - getting to work pp 1-34, part i - the mechanism design approach pp 35-44, 2 - vickrey–clarke–groves mechanisms pp 45-63, 3 - the envelope theorem and payoff equivalence pp 64-97, 4 - bidding equilibrium and revenue differences pp 98-156, 5 - interdependence of types and values pp 157-207, 6 - auctions in context pp 208-250, part ii - multi-unit auctions pp 251-254, 7 - uniform price auctions pp 255-295, 8 - package auctions and combinatorial bidding pp 296-338, bibliography pp 339-346, author index pp 347-350, subject index pp 351-368, altmetric attention score, full text views.

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The Role of Research Paradigms and Theories in Library and Information Science: A Critical Examination

11 Pages Posted: 3 Sep 2024

Fataneh vahabi

Isfahan University of Medical Sciences

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The Role of Research Paradigms and Theories in Library and Information Science: A Critical Examination This critical examination of the role of research paradigms and theories in Library and Information Science (LIS) argues that the choice of paradigm and theory can have a significant impact on the results of LIS research. The study examines the dominant research paradigms in LIS, including positivism and constructivism, and evaluates their strengths and limitations. The critical examination also explores the implications of these paradigms for the design of information systems and services. The study finds that positivist research paradigms have been criticized for their neglect of social context and individual experiences, while constructivist research paradigms have been praised for their ability to provide a nuanced understanding of information behavior. However, the study also highlights the limitations of both paradigms, including the potential for bias and the lack of generalizability. The study concludes that a critical examination of research paradigms and theories is essential for advancing the field of LIS. By acknowledging the limitations and biases of each paradigm, researchers can develop more nuanced understandings of information behavior and inform the design of more effective information systems and services.

Keywords: Research paradigms, theories, Library and Information Science, positivism, constructivism, critical examination

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Fataneh Vahabi (Contact Author)

Isfahan university of medical sciences ( email ).

Hezar Jerib Avenue Isfahan, 81745 Iran

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A study of the effect of viewing online health popular science information on users' willingness to change health behaviors – based on the psychological distance perspective

  • Published: 05 September 2024

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research paper on auction theory

  • Jingfang Liu 1 &
  • Shiqi Wang 1  

Along with increased health awareness and the advent of the information age, online health popular science information (OHPSI) has received more attention. However, it is unknown how the lots of online health information influences users to change unhealthy behavioral habits. Therefore, based on the psychological distance perspective, our research investigated the effect of viewing online health information on users' willingness to change their health behaviors in the future. In addition, this study also introduced the protection motivation theory to further investigate the mediating effect of protection motivation in the mechanisms of psychological distance in online health information. The data of the study were obtained by the research method of questionnaire survey and the proposed hypotheses were validated using Smartpls software. 87.28% of the respondents in this study's survey sample were aged 18–40 years old, and people in this age group have higher pressure from study and work, and live a fast-paced life with less free time, which makes them more likely to pay attention to OHPSI to improve their health. Therefore, the age group of the sample of this study is in line with the research purpose of this paper, which is conducive to enhancing the authenticity and reliability of the conclusions of this study. The conclusions of the study showed that the temporal, social, hypothetical and experiential distances in psychological distance can positively influence users' self-protection motivation. And protection motivation has a positive effect on users' willingness to change health behaviors. In addition, protection motivation can completely mediate the influence of psychological distance on users' willingness to change health behaviors after viewing online health information. The research not only expands the scope of application of construal level theory and protection motivation theory, but also has significant impact for creators of OHPSI and public health departments.

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Abbreviations

  • Online health popular science information
  • Construal level theory

Protection motivation theory

Temporal distance

Social distance

Hypothetical distance

Experiential distance

  • Protection motivation

Willingness to change health behaviors

Partial least squares

Composite reliability

Average variance extracted

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Conceptualization, J.L. and S.W.; methodology, J.L. and S.W.; software, S.W.; validation, S.W.; formal analysis and S.W.; investigation, S.W.; resources, S.W.; data curation, S.W.; writing—original draft preparation, S.W.; writing—review and editing, S.W.; visualization, S.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Liu, J., Wang, S. A study of the effect of viewing online health popular science information on users' willingness to change health behaviors – based on the psychological distance perspective. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06582-5

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