Huabing Li

Pricing the Dark

An Experiment on the Welfare Costs of Deceptive Design

Funded by the Erasmus Center of Law and Digitalization

Working paper, expected 2027, with Julia Krämer, Shu Li, Guinan Wang, and Zi Wang

Hidden fees and endless product suggestions push online shoppers into choices they would not otherwise make, but what do they actually cost? In an experiment in a mock online store where both money and time run short, this paper measures how much these two tricks take from shoppers, in money and in time, and whether more vulnerable shoppers lose more.

How shoppers may respond to dark patterns, by the time and money they lose (a simulation).pays moreloses bothtakes longerno tricksmoney losttime lost

Cite

Krämer, Julia, Huabing Li, Shu Li, Guinan Wang, and Zi Wang. “Pricing the Dark: An Experiment on the Welfare Costs of Deceptive Design.” Working paper, expected 2027.

BibTeX
@unpublished{kramerdeceptivedesign,
  author = {Krämer, Julia and Li, Huabing and Li, Shu and Wang, Guinan and Wang, Zi},
  title = {{Pricing the Dark: An Experiment on the Welfare Costs of Deceptive Design}},
  note = {Working paper, expected 2027}
}