Austin Miller, Samantha Snyder Cakir, Stacie Bosley and Sarah Greenman collaborated on an article just published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs. The article, entitled "Income disclosure and consumer judgment in a multilevel marketing experiment," studied the impact of information disclosures in the context of multi-level marketing (MLM) recruitment. Using experiment subjects from Mechanical Turk, they find that income disclosures, on average, do not significantly affect subjects' interest in the MLM opportunity, but they do decrease earnings estimates for most while increasing earnings estimates for a few. These effects depend on a subject's numeracy skills and whether they see their earnings potential as better-than-average. They also find that asking about earnings estimates first tends to decrease interest. Findings inform ongoing conversations regarding regulation of the MLM industry.
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