Attention economy and higher-order beliefs in voters’ online attention searches

Abstract

Presently we are living in an attention economy where individuals’ attention-spectrum is becoming very basic to their social, political and economic decision choices. With the use of Google Trends search volume index (SVI) data, this study explores whether the voters’ online attention searches around the context of the assembly election of West Bengal in 2021 show any higher-order beliefs or not. Methodologically, firstly, it has used the method of moments, then, followed both descriptive and inferential empirical analysis and finally, it has identified the cointegrating presence of voters’ lower-order vis-à-vis higher-order beliefs in their online search-attention for a few selected socio-politico-economic keywords. The study offers a few policy implications of online attention searches at attention management by stakeholders.

Keywords

• higher-order beliefs
• spatial dimension
• behavioral economics
• voters’ attention