Finding a common time slot for a group event is a daily conundrum and illustrates key features of group decisionmaking. It is a complex interplay of individual incentives and group dynamics. A participant would like the final time to be convenient for her, but she is also expected to be cooperative towards other people's preferences. We combine largescale data analysis with theoretical models from the voting literature to investigate strategic behaviors in event scheduling. We analyze all Doodle polls created in the US from JulySeptember 2011 (over 340,000 polls), consisting of both hidden polls (a user cannot see other responses) and open polls (a user can see all previous responses). By analyzing the differences in behavior in hidden and open polls, we gain unique insights into strategies that people apply in a natural decisionmaking setting. Responders in open polls are more likely to approve slots that are very popular or very unpopular, but not intermediate slots. We show that this behavior is inconsistent with models that have been proposed in the voting literature, and propose a new model based on combining personal and social utilities to explain the data.
One study found that respondents list a wider availability in open polls than in hidden polls REF .
Strategic Voting Behavior in Doodle Polls
CSCW '15
Computer Science