Value of Notifications & Information Obfuscation : Experimental Evidence from a Hyper-local News Platform

Platforms routinely deploy information notifications that influence consumer behavior. As an information design strategy, either the firm can be transparent and convey the true value of the notification to the user or the firm can obfuscate the notifications (especially for low value news item). We develop field experiments that assess whether obfuscation of notification can enhance the consumers’ evaluation of focal news item. We implement the experiments on a hyperlocal news platform that sends notifications for low value as well as high value (localized) news-information to the users. Across two experiments, we randomize a total of 8479 users in four Asian districts into the two types of notification cohorts for about 2458 unique news items. Within the obfuscated group, we vary the obfuscation of the type of the notifications i.e. either low value information or high value information or both. We find that obfuscation increases time spent on the app by 13.51 %, holding fixed all other attributes of the notification. The effect of the obfuscation is higher when the uncertainty about the notification is higher i.e. the consumer is relatively less experienced with the platform design element i.e. notification. As consumer experience increases, they move away from their reliance on obfuscated notifications and eventually learn the true value of the notification as well as the news item