Platform Governance Research Lab
We are a research group at Boston University, focusing on decentralized governance of marketplaces to curb misleading claims and digital harm.
What are we building?
Digital marketplaces like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay are “two sided platforms” with one side producing goods and services and the other side consuming them; whether that is the sale of advertised products on these platforms, or the consumption of information on two-sided social media platforms like Meta, X (Twitter), Reddit, and Bluesky. We are creating a platform to model such two-sided interactive marketplaces for the production and consumption of information and goods.
Our software platform bridges economic theory and user interface design, and allows us to explore mechanism design solutions to complex platform challenges that are impossible to study in the absence of human participant interactions. As a running example, we use the marketplace to investigate a new design solution to limit fake news and misleading information in the digital platforms. Our marketplace allows real human players to interact with each other in a gamified online simulation of real-world e-commerce conditions.
In this interactive marketplace, participants are randomly assigned to play as either buyers or sellers. Learn more about the project
Producer
Producer
Gamification of Interventions
Gamify economic interventions for realistic modeling of advertising and purchasing behavior by participants.
Interactive Experiments
Our marketplace is interactive and real-time so participants can play in versus mode, simulating real-life advertising.
Replicable Science
Re-run experiments with the same settings at the click of a button, making scientific experimentation trivially reproducible.
Behavioral Experiments in Two-sided Marketplaces
Our Research Process in Four Steps
Step 1: Design
Researchers design gamified experiments to simulate real-world consumer-producer marketplaces.
Step 2: Deploy
Human players join a game to play the designed experiment.
Step 3: Monitor
Data is collected from experimental activity.
Step 4: Analyze
Data is analyzed to test hypotheses.
Supported By
Technology Partners
