@inproceedings{bc4116e60c4c434f944b4a2bfba3492d,
title = "How is the mobile internet different? Search costs and local activities",
abstract = "We explore how internet browsing behavior varies between mobile phones and personal computers. Smaller screen sizes on mobile phones increase the cost to the user of reading information. A wider range of offline locations for mobile internet usage suggests that local activities are particularly important. Using data on user behavior at a (Twitter-like) microblogging service, we exploit exogenous variation in the ranking mechanism of posts to identify user search costs. We show (1) Search costs related to primacy effects are higher on mobile phones and (2) The benefit of searching for geographically close matches is higher on mobile phones. Thus, the mobile internet is somewhat less {"}internet-like{"}: search costs are higher and distance matters more. Our results suggest a possible exception: while primacy effect-related search costs are higher in a mobile phone, the cost of acquiring timely information appears to be lower on a mobile phone than on a PC.",
keywords = "Hierarchical bayesian, Local commerce, Microblogging, Mobile internet, Search costs, Social media, User behavior",
author = "Anindya Ghose and Avi Goldfarb and Han, {Sang Pil}",
year = "2011",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "9781618394729",
series = "International Conference on Information Systems 2011, ICIS 2011",
pages = "614--631",
booktitle = "International Conference on Information Systems 2011, ICIS 2011",
note = "32nd International Conference on Information System 2011, ICIS 2011 ; Conference date: 04-12-2011 Through 07-12-2011",
}