Represenation And Economic Valuation Of Information In Lay Economic Thinking

The increasing importance of information in contemporary societies, as well as the paradoxes of information and mainly the uncertainty surrounding its value, raise several questions concerning the valuing of information and of information producers by laymen. In our studies we examined whether informational goods are undervalued, compared to material goods, by potential buyers and sellers. Also, we examined the social representations of information, which provide an insight about the lay meaning of information. Finally, we investigated whether the undervaluation of information generalizes to the remuneration of professionals producing pure information (invention) compared to those who apply this information in order to produce material goods. Results showed that, whereas informational goods are devalued compared to material goods, the remuneration of intellectual professionals producing pure information is overvalued compared to this of intellectual professionals applying this information to produce services or material goods. The investigation of the structure of the social representations of information showed that the central core of the representation of information is mainly composed of categories referring to traditional media, functions and technologies of information, while contemporary functions and technologies are less frequent or absent