The Economics of Recommender Systems: Evidence from a Field Experiment on MovieLens

@article{Aridor2022TheEO,
  title={The Economics of Recommender Systems: Evidence from a Field Experiment on MovieLens},
  author={Guy Aridor and Duarte Gonçalves and Daniel Kluver and Ruoyan Kong and Joseph A. Konstan},
  journal={ArXiv},
  year={2022},
  volume={abs/2211.14219}
}
We conduct a eld experiment on a movie-recommendation platform to identify if and how recommendations a ect consumption. We use within-consumer randomization at the good level and elicit beliefs about unconsumed goods to disentangle exposure from informational e ects. We nd recommendations increase consumption beyond its role in exposing goods to consumers. We provide support for an informational mechanism: recommendations a ect consumers’ beliefs, which in turn explain consumption… 
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