Incentives for expressing opinions in online polls

  • Authors:
  • Radu Jurca;Boi Faltings

  • Affiliations:
  • Google Inc., Zurich, Switzerland;EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 9th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Prediction markets efficiently extract and aggregate the private information held by individuals about events and facts that can be publicly verified. However, facts such as the effects of raising or lowering interest rates can never be publicly verified, since only one option will be implemented. Online opinion polls can still be used to extract and aggregate private information about such questions. This paper addresses incentives for truthful reporting in online opinion polls. The challenge lies in designing reward schemes that do not require a-priori knowledge of the participants' beliefs. We survey existing solutions, analyze their practicality and propose a new mechanism that extracts accurate information from rational participants.