Persuasion with Ambiguous Communication

TL;DR

This paper investigates how ambiguous communication can be advantageous in persuasion scenarios involving ambiguity-averse senders and receivers, highlighting conditions under which ambiguity improves outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for using collections of experiments to facilitate persuasion with ambiguity, identifying when ambiguity benefits both parties.

Findings

Ambiguous communication can be beneficial when splitting experiments is possible.

Both sender and receiver benefit if the optimal experiment can be decomposed into Pareto-ranked parts.

No benefits are observed when the receiver has only two actions.

Abstract

We explore whether ambiguous communication can be beneficial to the sender in a persuasion problem, when the receiver (and possibly the sender) is ambiguity averse. Our analysis highlights the necessity of using a collection of experiments that form a splitting of an obedient experiment. Some experiments in the collection must be Pareto-ranked in that both players agree on their payoff ranking. If an optimal Bayesian persuasion experiment can be split in this way, then any not-too-ambiguity-averse sender as well as the receiver benefit. There are no benefits when the receiver has only two actions.