Incentives for expressing opinions in online polls

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. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.11 [Artificial Intelligence]: Distributed Artificial Intelligence General Terms Algorithms, Design, Economics Keywords opinion polls, mechanism design, incentive compatibility

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: SIGECOM
• Authors: Radu Jurca, Boi Faltings
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, ECommerce, Online Opinion Polls, Private Information, SIGECOM 2008