What Is Value of Information?

In the market economy, information has become an extremely important commodity. The information society is usually defined as the concentration of information production and consumption. Information concentration depends on the need for information and the extent to which this need is met. Therefore, one way to look at the formation of an information society is to evaluate the intensity of information exchange and the durability of internal information flow. So what is the value of information? How is its value determined? These issues have become one of the most basic problems facing the information society today. In recent years, behavioral economics has combined economic theory and psychological theory to study the subjective value of information, and has achieved certain results. These research results have important implications for us to understand the determination of the value of information and the characteristics of people's demand for information under the market economy.

Information value

What is information?

Modern definition of information . [2006, Medical Information (Journal), Deng Yu, etc.].

Information is a sign of matter, energy, information and its attributes . Inverse Wiener Information Definition

Information is an increase in certainty . inverse

How to collect valuable information from massive information and carry out analysis and research to form the basis for various decisions of enterprises is a problem faced by information personnel and market researchers. Information must be aggregated, integrated, and analyzed to produce value. Scattered information can only be news, and cannot reflect the true

Just as the value of a common commodity affects people's consumption of that commodity, people's perception of information (subjective value) affects the demand for it, so

Behavioral economics research on the endowment effect and the value judgment of information not only has direct significance for the development of information economics, but also has a broad guiding significance for how to correctly use information for scientific decision-making in the information society.

First, people's pursuit of decision-making information is to reduce the consequences of uncertainty. However, due to the endowment effect in the demand for information, people will buy a lot of information that they may not need, causing The excessive demand for information, and the resulting high value judgment on information, is subjective value. This irrational need for information is harmful. This is not only because of the monetary cost of acquiring the information, but more importantly the time cost. Gathering and knowing any information, even if it can be done without paying, must be time consuming. For example, today's Internet is highly developed, and a large amount of various information can be collected on the Internet without paying, and many people are obsessed with the Internet and cannot extricate themselves. In fact, a large part of the information we access and collect on the Internet every day is useless. Obviously, if the time cost is taken into account, the irrational excessive demand for information is bound to cause great waste. Therefore, each of us, as an information consumer, should be aware that we may fall into the irrational consumption trap in information consumption. We should choose the information we need rationally and economically control the monetary and time costs of obtaining the information.

Secondly, through the examination of the value of information, it is found that the inequality of the maximum willingness to pay (WTA) and the minimum acceptable compensation (WTP) or the endowment effect (EE) are the reasons for the low information transaction. The lack of information has increased the divergence between WTA and WTP and has led to low information transactions. On the contrary, the wealth of information will speed up transactions, so increasing the supply of information is an economic catalyst. Increasing the subjective value of information and its demand should be the goal of the healthy operation of the market economy, which is especially important for information sellers. Because information is often a decisive component of a market commodity, increasing the value of that information will increase the total value of the commodity and increase the transaction rate. On the other hand, if the information is free, the lower its subjective value, which will make WTA equal to WTP.

Obviously, the information exchange of an efficient information society should be active and fast, and more adequate information supply will help producers and consumers to formulate more complete production and consumption plans. Incomplete information flows undermine our predictions of optimistic prospects and expectations of the future. In the current situation where people have not adjusted their information consumption patterns dominated by endowment effects, our government must strive to expand the circulation and dissemination of information and increase the supply of information as much as possible. This not only requires the government to strongly support the development of the information industry, but more importantly, it requires the government to make public information transparent and transparent. The publicity and transparency of public information will make public information free, and its WTA is equal to WTP. This is not only conducive to removing the obstacles to information flow and reducing the waste of social and personal resources, but also has important practical significance for curbing a small number of government officials from using public information in their possession to seek rent and reduce and prevent power corruption.

Third, for enterprises, on the one hand, the value of information determines the value of the information. If the information is free, the subjective value is lower. Therefore, enterprises must strengthen the protection of their patent rights and unique technologies, otherwise the high value of their core technologies or patents will be greatly reduced. On the other hand, because the sharing of information is conducive to increasing transactions within the enterprise, the enterprise needs to establish information technology that adapts to the development of the times, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology applied by enterprises. Only through continuous communication of various business departments can we have a clear understanding of the value of information, so that the business units of the enterprise can cooperate with each other and form a joint force in the process of informationization. At the same time, since the value of information is affected by subjective value, how companies change their value of products and services in their product promotion and marketing becomes extremely important. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to apply the knowledge of psychology to the scientific packaging of enterprise product information in advertising and marketing planning.