My research program tackles critical questions at the intersection of economics, technology, and human behavior. Through a multi-method approach that combines theoretical modeling, laboratory and field experiments, large-scale data analysis, and cutting-edge technologies like virtual reality (VR) and generative AI (GenAI), my work makes contributions to five interconnected themes that advance scholarly understanding and deliver actionable solutions to pressing societal problems.
Non-Bayesian Persuasion (with Geoffroy de Clippel), Journal of Political Economy, 130.10 (2022): 2594-2642. Online Appendix.
Abstract: Following Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011), the paper studies persuasion as an information design problem. We investigate how mistakes in probabilistic inference impact optimal persuasion. The 'concavification method' is shown to extend naturally to a large class of belief updating rules, which we identify and characterize. This class comprises many non-Bayesian models discussed in the literature. We apply this new technique to gain insight into the revelation principle, the ranking of updating rules, when persuasion is beneficial to Sender, and when it is detrimental to Receiver. Our key result extends to also shed light on the question of robust persuasion.
Online Platform and Consumer Privacy: A Non-Bayesian Persuasion Perspective (with Jinghao Jia).
The Impact of Personalized Product Display on Consumer Purchasing Decisions - An Experimental Study (with Jinghao Jia and Chenyang Li).
Combatting Fake Reviews with Return Insurance on E-commerce Platforms: A Signaling Game Perspective (with Ke Wang).
Cheap talk with ambiguous intention: An Analysis of Stock Recommendations.
CEO’s Accent Bias in Corporate Communication (with Da He).
Trust and Cooperation at a Confluence of Worlds: An Experiment in Xinjiang, China (with Zhe Zhang and Louis Putterman), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 161 (2019): 128-144.
Abstract: We study trust and willingness to cooperate among and between Uyghur and Han college students in Xinjiang, China. In our incentivized laboratory-style decision-making experiment, within and between group interactions occur among identifiable participants without traceability of individual decisions and without explicitly referencing ethnicity. We find that members of each ethnicity show favoritism towards those of their own ethnicity in both trust and cooperation and that communication enhances inter-ethnic cooperation significantly. Other results include that Uyghur and Han subjects behave differently in their willingness to cooperate relative to willingness to trust, consistent with a conjecture about cultural persistence and centuries-old differences in lifeway.
[Title omitted for peer-review] (with Fan Rao and Xiaolin Xie). Submitted to the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance.
Attention and Green Delivery (with Te Bao, Yeow Hwee Chua, Xuan Luo, Ruge Zhang), accepted by 2025 SGFIN Annual Research Conference on Sustainability.
The Interaction of Psychological Distance and Framing in Climate Communication: Economic Appeals versus Ecological Grief (with Rongjin Tian and Luoye Chen).
Exploring the Impact of ESG Information and Ambiguity on Asset Pricing: Laboratory Experimental Evidence (with Fan Rao and Xiaolin Xie).
Presented at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Finance, Maastricht, Netherlands; and the 15th Annual Conference of the French Association of Experimental Economics, Nancy, France.
The Economic Value of Trust: Trust as a Substitute for Enforceable Contracts.
Assessing the Effects of Quantitative Green Behavior Label on Consumer Sustainable Choice (with Yannan Zhou, Luoye Chen, and Beijinni Li).
Rewiring Opportunity: How Improved Internet Infrastructure Reduces Intra-City Income Inequality in China (with Yanlin Wan, Yuzhi Hao, Aoqing Lyu, and Masaru Yarime). Under review at Economic Development and Cultural Change.
Abstract: This study investigates the impact of enhanced internet infrastructure on intra-city income inequality in China under the Broadband China Strategic Program (2014–2016). Employing a staggered difference-in-difference methodology, we find that the program substantially reduced intra-city income inequality of the demonstration cities, measured by a notable 0.029-point reduction in their Gini coefficients. This effect was primarily driven by income gains among low- and middle-income households, particularly in labor income. Our mechanism analysis further reveals that improved internet infrastructure facilitated new employment opportunities in the service sector and empowered low-skilled workers to transition to higher-paying roles within the platform economy. Our findings underscore the internet's potential to reduce inequality and promote inclusive labor markets, offering valuable policy insights for infrastructure investment and social equity in developing countries.
Honorable Mention, Asian Development Bank (ADB) – International Economic Association (IEA) Innovative Policy Research Award.
Previous title: Can Broadband Internet Infrastructure Narrow the Income Inequality? An Analysis of the Effects of Broadband China Strategic Program.
Generative AI as a Limited Equalizer: Experimental Evidence on Gender Gaps in Competition (with Lisha Qin and Fan Rao). Online Appendix.
Presented at the 2025 ESA World Meeting, Beijing, China.
Platform Pricing and Exclusion Strategies: Balancing Quality, Profitability, and Social Welfare (with Yangjie Gao and Xiaotong Sun).
Presented at the INFORMS International Meeting 2025, Singapore.
When Persuasion Is Enough: Experimental Evidence on Pre-Adoption Interventions for Protective Technology (with Jie Gao and Kewei Xu).
Does AI Deepen the Divide? A Dual-Bias Perspective on AI-Generated Content and Opinion Polarization (with Aoqing Lyu).
Assessing the Value of AI Assistants in Hospitals: Efficiency Gains, Patient Experience, and Physician Perceptions (with Jie Gao and Moyan Li).
Instrumentalizing Industrial Policy for GDP Manipulation (with Zihao Qu and Guang Zhang). Under review at the Journal of Law and Economics.
Greening Like China: How Dual-Randomized Environmental Inspections Reshape Firm-Regulator Interactions and Compliance Behavior (with Da He and Yi Zhang).
Informational Nudge for Sanitation: Experimental Evidence from China (with Yanlin Wan). Under review at China Economic Review.
Abstract: We Information provision is widely used to increase take-up of public programs, yet information alone may not translate into action. We examine how informational nudges affect participation in China’s Rural Toilet Revolution (RTR), a campaign to boost rural development through improved living conditions. We implemented a randomized controlled trial where villagers watched one of six short advocacy videos tailored to local information demand. Videos highlight the benefits of RTR participation, the harms of poor sanitation, or techniques for toilet upgrades, and are cross-randomized to include or exclude a call-for-participation message delivered by a former RTR participant. We find that any RTR-relevant information increases immediate self-reported willingness to participate. In contrast, subsequent enrollment responds primarily to benefit-salience messages and, to a lesser extent, harm-salience messages, with effects concentrated among villagers with higher baseline RTR knowledge. These results suggest that effective advocacy should make benefits salient and combine information with interventions that reduce knowledge barriers.
How Meritocratic Selection Fuels Corruption: A Laboratory Experiment on the Entitlement Effect (with Dexuan Zhang and Fan Hu).
Presented at the 2024 Asia-Pacific ESA Meeting, Singapore.
Previous title: Entitlement and Corruption: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment.
What Determines Travelers’ Acceptance of MaaS? Insights from a Meta-Analysis (with Manlian Pan, Yipeng Chen, and Xiaotong Sun). Under review at Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.
Anti-corruption Political Turnover and Government Public Service Quality (with Zihao Qu).
Closing the Treatment Gap from Both Sides: A Nationwide Mental Healthcare Policy in China (with Yanlin Wan and Yuzhi Hao).
AI Policy in Education: A Randomized Controlled Trial Experiment (with Jinghao Jia and Yanlin Wan).
Gender Quota Policies and Workplace Sabotage (with Zhichen Guo, Yun Hou, and Dexuan Zhang).
ESG Regulation and Firms’ Voluntary ESG Information Disclosure (with Da He).
Understanding and Codesigning Photo-based Reminiscence with Older Adults (with Zhongyue Zhang, Lina Xu, Xingkai Wang, and Mingming Fan), Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 9, no. 2 (2025): 1-30.
Abstract: Reminiscence, the act of revisiting past memories, is crucial for self-reflection and social interaction, significantly enhancing psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and self-identity among older adults. In HCI and CSCW, there is growing interest in leveraging technology to support reminiscence for older adults. However, understanding how older adults actively use technologies for realistic and practical reminiscence in their daily lives remains limited. This paper addresses this gap by providing an in-depth, empirical understanding of technology-mediated, photo-based reminiscence among older adults. Through a two-part study involving 20 older adults, we conducted semi-structured interviews and co-design sessions to explore their use and vision of digital technologies for photo-based reminiscence activities. Based on these insights, we propose design implications to make future reminiscence technologies more accessible and empowering for older adults.
Interpersonal Trust and Trustworthiness in a High-Immersion Virtual Environment: A Trust Game Experiment (with Hao Ling and Xiangyu Xu).
Abstract: Understanding interpersonal trust within high-immersion virtual environments (HIVE) that underpin emerging digital platforms like the metaverse is crucial. This study conducts the first replication of the canonical trust game in a HIVE, where two participants in separate real-world spaces play an anonymous one-shot trust game in a virtual lab. Our design includes three conditions: a VR baseline group without any avatar interaction, an avatar-presence group where participants were briefly exposed to the counterpart‘s avatar visually, and a physical control group that made decisions in a traditional lab setting. We find no significant difference in trust or trustworthiness between the physical and VR baseline groups, while visual avatar presence significantly increases trust. Furthermore, male participants show higher trust propensity than females, and participants with more gaming experience exhibit greater trustworthiness. These results validate the HIVE as a powerful platform for experimental economics and offer practical insights for designing virtual environments where trust is essential.
Under review at the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Presented at the 2025 ESA World Meeting, Beijing, China.
Previous title: A Replication of the Trust Game in a High-Immersion Virtual Reality Environment.
[Title omitted for peer-review] (with Chenyang Li, Zhixuan Deng, and Hao Ling). Revise and Resubmit at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’26).
[Title omitted for peer-review] (with Dawei Xiong, Zhijun Ma, Hao Ling, Xun Wu, and Mingming Fan). Revise and Resubmit at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’26).
[Title omitted for peer-review] (with Zhongyue Zhang, Chao LIU, Luyao Shen, Wen Ku, Yuru Huang, Mengyang Wang, and Mingming Fan). Revise and Resubmit at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’26).
[Title omitted for peer-review] (with Zhongyue Zhang, Mingqing XU, Mengyang Wang, Lina Xu, and Mingming Fan). Revise and Resubmit at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’26).
Mind vs. Machine: How Cognitive Reflection and Linguistic Cues Shape Detection of AI-Generated Reviews (with Ke Wang). Under review at International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction.
Abstract: AI-generated text is increasingly embedded in everyday communication, which often appears indistinguishable from human writing. This raises urgent questions about how people discern whether text is authored by humans or large language models (LLMs). We study this challenge in the context of online product reviews, a domain where credibility directly shapes trust and decision-making. In an online experiment (N = 168), participants were recruited to distinguish 240 reviews generated by diverse LLM prompts alongside authentic human reviews. We found that although people performed above chance, they were consistently overconfident. Reviews produced through paraphrasing were especially deceptive, exploiting linguistic cues such as analytic tone, readability, social references, etc. Importantly, participants with high cognitive reflection scores were less susceptible to AI reviews across all prompt conditions. They leveraged diagnostic cues (e.g., achievement-oriented words) more effectively than intuitive participants but still exhibited blind spots. These findings reveal fundamental limits in human discernment of AI text and suggest design strategies that strengthen resilience against AI-driven misinformation.
VRization: A Social-Science-Informed Framework for Designing and Evaluating VR as a Scientific Instrument in HCI (with Hao Ling, Zhongyue Zhang, and Mingming Fan).
Group Cooperation and Competition in a Highly Immersive Virtual Reality Farming Game (with Hao Ling, Chunming Ma, and Lei Chen).
Dual-Pathway Mechanisms in Multi-User VR for Teaching and Learning Economics (Hao Ling, Chunming Ma, Xu Zhang, Lei Chen, Yi-Lung Kuo).
The Gendered Pitch: Causal Evidence of Bias in Investor Judgments from an AI Face-and-Voice Manipulation Experiment (with Yun Hou, Hao Ling, and Xiangyu Xu).
Time Perception and Intertemporal Choice in VR (with Aoqing Lyu, Hao Ling, and Xiangyu Xu).
The Effect of Tangible Rewards and Automated Smart Contracts on Present Bias (with Chongye Huang and Chenyang Li).
Beyond Aversion and Seeking: Examining Divergent Ambiguity Attitudes in Experimental Asset Markets (with Fan Rao).
Presented at the 2024 Theoretical and Experimental Macroeconomics Workshop, Singapore.
The Influence of Pay Frequencies on Consumption and Saving (with Lisha Qin).
Is There a Founder Penalty in Financial Job Markets? An Audit Study in China (with Kingking Li and Chi Zhang).
Categorical thinking and life experiences: A metatheory of anomalies in economic lab experiments (with Chongye Huang and Chenyang Li).