New Power Law Signature of Media Exposure in Human Response Waiting Time Distributions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the power-law decay in human response times to media-driven events, specifically humanitarian donations after the 2004 tsunami, providing empirical evidence for a priority queuing process model.

Contribution

It presents the first empirical evidence of a power-law decay in response times, linking media focus to human task execution dynamics.

Findings

Response decay follows a power law with exponent ~2.5

Media focus influences the rate of human response

Supports the priority queuing process model in human behavior

Abstract

We study the humanitarian response to the destruction brought by the tsunami generated by the Sumatra earthquake of December 26, 2004, as measured by donations, and find that it decays in time as a power law ~ 1/t^(alpha) with alpha=2.5 +/- 0.1. This behavior is suggested to be the rare outcome of a priority queuing process in which individuals execute tasks at a rate slightly faster than the rate at which new tasks arise. We believe this to be the first empirical evidence documenting this recently predicted regime, and provide additional independent evidence that suggests it arises as a result of the intense focus placed on this donation "task" by the media.