Research

Abstract.

Loot boxes are digital containers of randomised rewards commonly found in video games and mobile apps. Loot boxes are especially common in free-to-play games, a videogame genre popular among adolescents and young adults. Recently, scholars examined the mechanism behind loot boxes due to their potential negative impact on consumers. For example, scholars suggested that loot boxes may distort the economic behaviour of the average consumer and thus be considered a form of unfair practice. This study examines the role of virtual currencies, money illusion, and non-intuitive exchange rates on consumers' spending behaviour for online transactions involving risk and ambiguity in an incentivised randomised controlled trial on UK citizens. We find that virtual currencies under fixed exchange rate induce subjects to increase spending, contributing to the debate on the neutrality of virtual currencies and experimental currency units. Moreover, when the nominal value of a virtual currency is higher than its real value, subjects reduce their willingness to pay and become more sensitive to risk and ambiguity. Lastly, the use of non-intuitive exchange rates further reduces the willingness to pay of our subjects (non significantly though). Based on our findings, we recommend policymakers not to underestimate the impact of virtual currencies in the online gaming sector. Finally, we suggest that video game developers support the use of real-world currencies in loot box transactions to enhance transparency and consumer understanding. 

Abstract.

An urgent issue in the medical sector is emergency room (ER) overcrowding. To divert less urgent patients to alternative forms of care - such as territorial health (TH) - and also improve the transparency of the healthcare system, some Italian hospitals have begun to publish online and in real-time the level of congestion of ER departments. This study models the decision-making process of a patient choosing between visiting an emergency room or visiting a territorial health facility. Then, using an incentivized discrete choice experiment we test the effect of the policy in a setting in which participants are given the probability to be in a critical health status, while information on ER congestion levels are manipulated in a between-subject design. Our results show that real-time congestion data increase the overall number of visits. In particular, we observe more inappropriate visits in intermediate levels of congestion. This evidence suggests that when information is available the uncertainty of ER visits decreases, leading risk-averse individuals to choose the ER more frequently. We also test the effect of an alternative policy in which intermediate levels of congestion are equally probable. The effect on the total number of ER visits is not significantly different from 0, suggesting that the alternative policy may combine transparency improvements with desired outcomes. Our study also investigates differences in ER visits between a scenario where individuals make decisions for themselves and one where they decide on behalf of someone unable to do so, finding more frequent visits in the for-others scenario. Additionally, partici pants show a preference for TH treatments, which however is not driven by moral considerations towards the use of ER resources. We conclude that, to avoid problems of overcrowding, hospitals should carefully plan the information provided on their website