The impact of collective action and market prices. Evidence from an online agricultural discussion forum
| Pages | 565-583 |
| Published date | 12 August 2019 |
| Date | 12 August 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2018-0243 |
| Author | Elif Özcan-Tok,Mustafa Utku Özmen,Ertan Tok,Tuba Yılmaz |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Bibliometrics,Databases,Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet,Records management & preservation,Document management |
The impact of collective action
and market prices
Evidence from an online
agricultural discussion forum
Elif Özcan-Tok
Structural Economic Research Department,
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey
Mustafa Utku Özmen
Research and Monetary Policy Department,
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey
Ertan Tok
Banking and Financial Institutions Department,
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey, and
Tuba Yılmaz
Research and Monetary Policy Department,
Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the information sharing in an online
discussion forum, over an agricultural market characterized by a largenumber of small-scale farmers, has an
impact on the market prices.
Design/methodology/approach –All the comments posted by farmers and traders on four storable items
(potato, onion, lemon and apple) in an online dis cussion forum over 2013–2017 arecollected. By usingtext mining
techniquesand regressionanalysis, words characterizingthe actions and expectations of farmersand traders on
the courseof the market price are identified. Then,summary indicators pointing to positiveand negative views
on prices are calculated. Finally, the relation between these indicators and marketprices is analyzed.
Findings –The results point to economically significant impacts, as one standard deviation increase in the
share of net positive comments is associated with 20, 22, 13 and 10 percent increase in the consumer prices of
potato, onion, lemon and apple, respectively within three months.
Originality/value –Overall, this study provides an evidence for the link between information sharing of
farmers on online domain and their collaboration in the physical domain. Thus, the study implies that the
information synthesized from online discussion forums may actually contain va luable information for
researchers and policy makers regarding the behavior of agents even on traditional domains such as agriculture.
Keywords Information access, Collective action, Bag-of-words text mining, Online discussion forum
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Innovations in communication technology and the availability of access to online
information have been changing the way the society seeks and retrieves information and the
way people communicate with each other. These changes are also transforming the way of
the agents in the economy to access and share information, and they provide new platforms
for cooperation and organization as well. In case of agriculture, collective actions among
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2019
pp. 565-583
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-08-2018-0243
Received 17 August 2018
Revised 27 January 2019
Accepted 17 April 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
The views and opinions expressed in this study belong solely to the authors and do not under any
circumstance reflect the views, opinions or the interests of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey
or its staff. The authors thank the Editor and two reviewers for their comments, as well as Murat
Topkaya for his support.
565
Collective
action and
market prices
small-scale farmers, which have traditionally been organized through formal agricultural
cooperatives, may also be conducted through less formal structures (i.e. Hellin et al., 2009;
Aker and Ksoll, 2016; Shimamoto et al., 2015). In the age of digital forms of interaction and
low cost access to online information, such unorganized collective actions are essentially
much easier to form, in order to fulfill the information needs. Accordingly, new platforms to
access information for agents such as social media, blogs and online discussion forums have
gained ground. Consequently, the online word-of-mouth, which flows through digital
channels, has attracted great attention from the researchers as this sort of exchange may
have an impact on the behavior of the information seekers (i.e. Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006;
Duan et al., 2008; Casalo et al., 2017; Toder-Alon and Brunel, 2018).
Online information sharing may also induce collective action. To this end, Lee et al. (2015)
analyze the convergence of individuals’actions to a uniform social behavior –herding. The
herding of individuals may be followed through the online discussion forums where users
both share their own ideas and seek insights into the actions of other participants on various
topics related to the subject of interest. Such outlets may especially be useful for small-scale
farmers who need to access timely market information in order to form their production and
sales decisions. They may also seek to infer the actions of other agents in the market and
to stimulate collective action through sharing their own comments. Online reviews are likely
to be affected by the prior reviews of other users. On this ground, it is possible to observe a
herding behavior in such online forums since farmers and traders may share information
about their marketing activities, stockholding behaviors and product yields. They may even
provide insights on their price expectations, which play an important role in the market
outcome as shown by Heemeijer et al. (2009).
In this paper, the impact of collective actions of farmers and traders –inferred from the
information exchange in an online forum by using text mining techniques –on the prices of
several storable fruits and vegetables is analyzed. To this end, the most widely used online
forum on agricultural products in Turkey is set as the framework for the analysis. The
forum provides a wealth of textual data involving timely information on farmers’and
traders’activities, expectations and views. In this regard, the current study does not only
focus on the impact of increased information exchange facilitated by various technologies
and mediums, but also delves deeper into the content of the exchanged information and how
it is related to market outcomes. The main hypothesis is that the online discussion forum
serves as an interaction platform for the farmers to close their information gap and to
engage in collective action; and in return, the collective actions of the farmers affect the final
consumer prices through the changes in the quantity supplied to the market.
The paper focuses on four items: potato, onion, lemon and apple, which are the most
commented on storable items in the discussion forum. For the textual analysis, a wide list of
most frequently used words in the comments describing the activities of the farmers and
traders and their expectations is considered. Among these words, the ones which are
statistically correlated with price changes (positive and negative) are identified and then two
aggregate indicators are generated to qualitatively summarize positive and negative
actions, expectations and views coming out of the comments posted by the farmers and
traders on the course of the market prices. In the empirical part of the study, the impact of
the constructed indicators on final consumer prices is analyzed.
The results of the study show that the collective actions of farmers and traders formed
through an online discussion forum significantly affect the market prices of storable goods
in the short term. The estimated effects are also economically sizeable in the sense that one
standard deviation increase in the share of net positive views (the difference between
the share of positive comments in total comments and the share of negative comments in
total comments) increases the prices of potato, onion, lemon and apple by 20, 22, 13 and
10 percent, respectively in three months.
566
OIR
43,4
To continue reading
Request your trial