Measuring Ethnic Preferences in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Mobile Advertising

PLoS One. 2016 Dec 22;11(12):e0167779. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0167779. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

We present a field experiment that uses geo-referenced smartphone advertisements to measure ethnic preferences at a highly disaggregated level. Different types of banners advertising a vote matching tool are randomly displayed to mobile Internet users in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while recording their spatial coordinates. Differences in the response (click) rate to different ethnic cues on these banners are used to measure temporal and spatial variation in ethnic preferences among the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our study lays out the theoretical and practical underpinnings of this technology and discusses its potential for future applications, but also highlights limitations of this approach.

MeSH terms

  • Advertising*
  • Cell Phone / statistics & numerical data*
  • Consumer Behavior / statistics & numerical data*
  • Ethnicity / statistics & numerical data*
  • Humans
  • Internet*
  • Text Messaging / statistics & numerical data*
  • Text Messaging / trends

Grants and funding

The authors received funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Sofja Kovalevskaja Award, www.humboldt-foundation.de). The funding organization had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.