Power law signature of media exposure in human response waiting time distributions

Riley Crane, Frank Schweitzer, and Didier Sornette
Phys. Rev. E 81, 056101 – Published 3 May 2010

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/tα with α=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 an empirical evidence documenting the recently predicted [G. Grinstein and R. Linsker, Phys. Rev. E 77, 012101 (2008)] regime, and provide additional independent evidence that suggests that this “highly attentive regime” arises as a result of the intense focus placed on this donation “task” by the media.

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  • Received 8 March 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.81.056101

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Riley Crane1,2,*, Frank Schweitzer1, and Didier Sornette1,3

  • 1Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2Human Dynamics, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142 USA
  • 3Swiss Finance Institute, c/o University of Geneva, 40 Boulevard Du Pont d’Arve, CH 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland

  • *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; rcrane@ethz.ch.

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Vol. 81, Iss. 5 — May 2010

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