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Communication Effort and the Cost of Language

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The transmission of information is crucial for productivity and growth, but language differences may limit its effectiveness. Jacopo Bregolin discusses how the exogenous cost of language affects communication effort, and the trade-off faced by knowledge platforms in implementing their website in multiple languages.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 3, 2024

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This video video discusses a research paper that investigates how communication friction affects the quality of information transmission, focusing on two primary channels: incentives and exogenous constraints.

The paper highlights that communication friction can arise when information holders lack incentives to share information optimally or face external constraints—like language barriers—that hinder effective communication. The study specifically examines these issues in the context of knowledge platforms, particularly Stack Overflow, which has introduced versions in various languages to accommodate non-English speakers.

Key findings include:
1. Allowing users to communicate in their native language significantly improves the quality of their contributions, increasing coding snippets in responses by 21%.
2. When quality incentives are simultaneously present, the communication quality can further increase to 118%.
3. New users who participate only when their native language is available tend to produce lower quality answers compared to users who were already active in English, suggesting that these less-expert participants may dilute overall content quality.

The implications suggest that platforms should allow users to communicate in their native languages to enhance information quality. However, a balance must be struck, as this openness may invite less knowledgeable users, requiring effective moderation to maintain content quality. The findings underscore the importance for organizations to consider communication frictions when forming multinational teams, highlighting the need for strategies that accommodate diverse language capabilities.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This paper wants to study

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how communication friction may affect the quality

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of information transmissions.

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Uh, and, there are two possible channels

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that communication over which should communication friction

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may affect communication outcomes.

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One channel is incentives,

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and the other channel is exogenous constraints.

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Let me just lead you through this On one side, you know,

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potentially if, in the company,

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in the information holder, needs to transmit information

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to the actual person that will make the action,

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if there are no incentives, means

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that this information holder may have interest

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or of not disclosing that information

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or to disclose it in a non-optimal way

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that creates the information reduction

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and the, the information transmission is

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not effective, right?

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So that's incentives problems that are very strong and,

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and the exist in many different environments

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at the same time, there could be situation in which,

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the information holder has perfect incentive

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to transmit information.

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So it really wants to transmit information as much

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as possible, but cannot, or cannot in an optimal way

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because of exogenous constraints.

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So one example of exogenous constraints

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are language friction.

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So if the person all the information needs

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to communicate in a foreign language

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and is not fluent in that language,

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that may prevent the person

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to actually communicate fluently.

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So that's kind of the main friction

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that I address in this paper, which studies exactly how,

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the use of offering language may prevent the

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optimal transmission of information.

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And, I do this in the context of, of online platforms

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and the platform that I call on knowledge platforms.

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This means that our platform that

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rely on voluntary participation from the internet

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and aggregate information from around the world

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to build some knowledge, that,

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that people can then browse

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and use for their, for their product,

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for their activity and, and work.

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Um, so this platform really rely on high quality content

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that comes from very different countries, right?

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So they are particularly affected by this type of friction

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because now I have people, users from different parts

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of the world that, will, will bring in content

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and information that everyone wants to, brands and,

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and, and, and see.

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And so I believe that in this context, this type

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of friction is particularly important

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because, the quality of the information that the,

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this information aggregators collect becomes really

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determinant for the success of these platforms.

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Yeah, so, so as I mentioned, the,

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the setting I'm using is the one on Stack overflow.

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So Stack Overflow, just to give a quick introduction

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to people that may not be familiar, this is a website that,

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provides a question answers

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so people from the community can ask question freely

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and then other members provide answers.

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And this is all based on voluntary participation,

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so there is no remuneration of such of sexual interactions.

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Um, and so these websites were first,

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first introduced in English

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because it's a English company, American company actually.

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Uh, and then,

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and then all communication in this website was constrained

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to be in, in English.

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Um, so what is interesting is that the platform has decided

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to introduce clone versions

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of their website in different languages.

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And in particular, they, they introduced at different point

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in time, our website in Portuguese, in Spanish,

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in Japanese and Russian.

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And this was really driven by the fact that they wanted to,

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increase potentially the reach of the platform

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to also communities that are not

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proficient in English, right?

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So what is most interesting

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and useful for my research is

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that I can track empirically users

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that are participating in English also on the other side.

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So basically if there is a native Portuguese speaker,

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I can see what this person was producing

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and contributing when only English was available,

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and then I can track their participation once their

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native language became available.

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So basically, again, my Portuguese user

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before who only write in English now, is also able

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to write in Portuguese,

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and they can compare the content

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that they produced in English and the Portuguese.

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So this allows me really to compare their participation and,

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and see if the quality of their communication

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as change it, right?

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So that's the kind of the main, the main empirical setting

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that I exploit.

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And I will also explore the fact that,

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I can observe users that were not active in English before,

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but now were able

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to start participating once their native language

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became available, right?

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So these kind of the, things I can observe in the data,

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which allow me to carry this research.

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Um, and then normally at this point, most people ask me,

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what is the measure of quality that, that you're using?

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Because, you know, like as I said

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before, I think one big contribution of this paper is

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that I actually can, can see in the text

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of the communication what is the quality,

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but then the question is

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how I can actually quantify that quality.

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Um, so just to give a word about this,

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of course I wanted a measure

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that is comparable across different

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sites and different languages.

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So I could not be just a text measure

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that produce language specific.

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So what I used, I rely on the fact

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that Stack Workflow is specifically about programming

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languages and coding, and then I found the number

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of separate snippets of code that appear in an answer.

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So basically, people normally as a,

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when they answer a question about programming, they tend

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to write some explanation

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and then introduce some code that, that people can use.

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Um, so they, they, the hypothesis here is,

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or the assumption if you want, is that,

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if I have text code, text code multiple times,

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I'm either guiding you a clear step-by-step procedure.

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So more, more clear clarity on the, on the process that the,

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the questionnaire should implement

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to solve the answer the problem,

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or I'm just giving you more information, right?

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So I'm giving you different pieces of code

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because there are complementary inform.

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So either way I'm giving you a higher quality answer

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because it provides either more clarity or more information.

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But I'm using the number of separate snippet of code

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as a way to measure quality of communication.

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And I like this measure because it really based,

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based on the choice of communication

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that the answer has made.

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Um, of course, I will compare also these measure

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with measure based on outcomes

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and in particular on,

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on whether the answer has been selected as best answer.

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So, as in many of these platforms,

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so the question I can then pick which answer actually

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solved the problem, right?

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So that's also sort of measure of, of, of quality

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based on whether actually the answer was successful in,

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in helping the questionnaire.

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So, yeah, so, the, so I carry two main analysis.

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The first analysis is focused on understanding whether the

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use of a language did impact communication quality.

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And what I find is that being able

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to use the native language rather than English allow leads

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people to increase their communication quality by 21%.

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So this means that the, the number of pieces of code

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that the, the, the answer contain increases on average

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by 21% percentage points.

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So, so this is a substantial, that substantial effect.

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And what is interesting is that this effect is complimentary

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to other dimensions.

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So as I mentioned at the beginning of the, I, I said

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that,

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incentives also may matter in communication friction.

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So what I also do in this paper is

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to look at incentives as well.

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And theoretically speaking, we should expect

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that incentives may also play a role.

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And what I find is that these exogenous cost

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of language are complimentary to incentives, meaning

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that if I allow a person to speak their native language,

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but I also incentivize this person to provide high effort,

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then the overall increasing quality is much higher.

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So I find an increase by 118 percent,

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and also there is a complementarity with the questionnaire

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que, effort.

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So the question quality.

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So if, the question quality is higher, the impact

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of being able to use the native language

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is actually even larger.

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So this shows overall that there is a positive effect

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of allowing people,

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to use the native language in their communication quality.

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On the, on the downside, what I find is

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that the new joiners, so join, so users that started

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participating only when the native

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language became available.

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So these that were not able to participate in English,

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but were able to participate in their native language,

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this user, you know,

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in fact produce lower quality answers compared to users

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that were already active in English.

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So what the, the kind of mechanism that I, I, I suggest

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to explain this fact is that

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whenever users are only able to use English,

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they face the cost of using a foreign language.

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But if they are very highly expert of their, of their

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subject, then they will still participate.

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While, while if users are not native in English,

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then they are not expert, then they will not participate.

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Nevertheless, these users that are not expert are now able

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to participate because they can use their native language.

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So to some, to some extent, what I'm saying is

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that the language cost, the language friction act as a,

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a selection device or as a barrier basically to entry.

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So users that, have higher expertise,

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even if they have a high cost of language,

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will still participate in English while user

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with low expertise will not.

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So basically allowing users to use their native language

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will induce low, less, less expert user

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to start participating.

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So this is kind of a downside for the platform

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because, while improved communication quality from the

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first set of users now is bringing in more users

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that are less expert, right?

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So first of all,

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there are policy implication for the platform.

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So the platform now platform, no,

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that I call knowledge platform platform

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that rely on on users that come from all,

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all over the world, that face this, this problem of having

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information aggregated from, from the people

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that speak different languages, you know,

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face this challenge,

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and the main policy implications that yes,

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that affects the quality.

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I mean, the fact that these users cannot use the native

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language affects the quality of their communication

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and the information they provide.

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So indeed, if the quality is really one of the major concern

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of the platform, they should allow users

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to use the native languages.

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And this is a bit what we see in Wikipedia, which,

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finally has allowed all other language to appear out there,

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because other, they care a lot about quality

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and they have less, problem other dimensions.

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At the same time, we have this problem that, the,

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they allow platforms to increase, to, to,

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to introduce different languages,

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will lead the less e user to participate.

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So then the policy implication here is

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that if the platform has in place a very strong moderation,

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program, then, then

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that should not be a big problem, right?

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And then should compensate.

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And so the platform may still want to have as many

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Languages as possible and then moderate very well, so

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that all these type of lower quality content

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are, are faded out.

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Uh, but if this is not the case,

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then potentially the platform may prefer

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to keep fewer languages so that the barriers will still

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prevent not too much participation from less expert users.

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So these are kind of main policy implications

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for this specific platform.

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Then of course, you know, it's always the kind

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of the big challenge for economists

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to draw more general conclusions.

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And of course, the settings may not allow

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complete external validity to other settings, but I will.

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But overall, this paper suggests that

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whenever firms collaborate across countries,

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or when teams are multinational

12:39.305 --> 12:41.365
and there are different people working from different

12:41.645 --> 12:43.645
countries and so on, then these are factors

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that should be taken into account, right?

12:45.225 --> 12:48.045
So, there are communication friction, they exist

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and they provide the potential,

12:50.915 --> 12:52.765
information quality effects.

12:53.345 --> 12:54.885
So the, the companies

12:54.885 --> 12:56.245
and organizations should take

12:56.245 --> 12:57.925
that into account when they build teams

12:58.305 --> 13:01.005
and multinational, multinational, interactions.

Communication Friction in Information Transmission

00:00:00 - This paper wants to study how communication friction may affect the quality of information transmissions. and, there are two possible channels that communication over which should communication friction may affect communication outcomes. One channel is incentives, and the other channel is exogenous constraints. Let me just lead you through this On one side, you know, potentially if, in the company, in the information holder, needs to transmit information
00:00:33 - if there are no incentives, means that this information holder may have interest or of not disclosing that information or to disclose it in a non-optimal way that creates the information reduction and the, the information transmission is not effective, right? So that's incentives problems that are very strong and, and the exist in many different environments at the same time, there could be situation in which, the information holder has perfect incentive
00:01:03 - So it really wants to transmit information as much as possible, but cannot, or cannot in an optimal way because of exogenous constraints. So one example of exogenous constraints are language friction. So if the person all the information needs to communicate in a foreign language and is not fluent in that language, that may prevent the person to actually communicate fluently. So that's kind of the main friction that I address in this paper, which studies exactly how,
00:01:36 - optimal transmission of information. And, I do this in the context of, of online platforms and the platform that I call on knowledge platforms. This means that our platform that rely on voluntary participation from the internet and aggregate information from around the world to build some knowledge, that, that people can then browse and use for their, for their product, for their activity and, and work.
00:02:06 - that comes from very different countries, right? So they are particularly affected by this type of friction because now I have people, users from different parts of the world that, will, will bring in content and information that everyone wants to, brands and, and, and, and see. And so I believe that in this context, this type of friction is particularly important because, the quality of the information that the, this information aggregators collect becomes really
00:02:37 - Yeah, so, so as I mentioned, the, the setting I'm using is the one on Stack overflow. So Stack Overflow, just to give a quick introduction to people that may not be familiar, this is a website that, provides a question answers so people from the community can ask question freely and then other members provide answers. And this is all based on voluntary participation, so there is no remuneration of such of sexual interactions. and so these websites were first,

Expanding Communication Through Multilingual Platforms

00:03:08 - because it's a English company, American company actually. and then, and then all communication in this website was constrained to be in, in English. so what is interesting is that the platform has decided to introduce clone versions of their website in different languages. And in particular, they, they introduced at different point in time, our website in Portuguese, in Spanish, in Japanese and Russian. And this was really driven by the fact that they wanted to,
00:03:41 - to also communities that are not proficient in English, right? So what is most interesting and useful for my research is that I can track empirically users that are participating in English also on the other side. So basically if there is a native Portuguese speaker, I can see what this person was producing and contributing when only English was available, and then I can track their participation once their
00:04:11 - So basically, again, my Portuguese user before who only write in English now, is also able to write in Portuguese, and they can compare the content that they produced in English and the Portuguese. So this allows me really to compare their participation and, and see if the quality of their communication as change it, right? So that's the kind of the main, the main empirical setting that I exploit. And I will also explore the fact that, I can observe users that were not active in English before,
00:04:44 - to start participating once their native language became available, right? So these kind of the, things I can observe in the data, which allow me to carry this research. and then normally at this point, most people ask me, what is the measure of quality that, that you're using? Because, you know, like as I said before, I think one big contribution of this paper is that I actually can, can see in the text of the communication what is the quality, but then the question is
00:05:15 - so just to give a word about this, of course I wanted a measure that is comparable across different sites and different languages. So I could not be just a text measure that produce language specific. So what I used, I rely on the fact that Stack Workflow is specifically about programming languages and coding, and then I found the number of separate snippets of code that appear in an answer. So basically, people normally as a, when they answer a question about programming, they tend
00:05:46 - and then introduce some code that, that people can use. so they, they, the hypothesis here is, or the assumption if you want, is that, if I have text code, text code multiple times, I'm either guiding you a clear step-by-step procedure. So more, more clear clarity on the, on the process that the, the questionnaire should implement to solve the answer the problem, or I'm just giving you more information, right? So I'm giving you different pieces of code because there are complementary inform.

Impact of Language on Communication Quality

00:06:20 - because it provides either more clarity or more information. But I'm using the number of separate snippet of code as a way to measure quality of communication. And I like this measure because it really based, based on the choice of communication that the answer has made. of course, I will compare also these measure with measure based on outcomes and in particular on, on whether the answer has been selected as best answer. So, as in many of these platforms,
00:06:52 - solved the problem, right? So that's also sort of measure of, of, of quality based on whether actually the answer was successful in, in helping the questionnaire. So, yeah, so, the, so I carry two main analysis. The first analysis is focused on understanding whether the use of a language did impact communication quality. And what I find is that being able to use the native language rather than English allow leads
00:07:25 - So this means that the, the number of pieces of code that the, the, the answer contain increases on average by 21% percentage points. So, so this is a substantial, that substantial effect. And what is interesting is that this effect is complimentary to other dimensions. So as I mentioned at the beginning of the, I, I said that, incentives also may matter in communication friction. So what I also do in this paper is
00:07:53 - And theoretically speaking, we should expect that incentives may also play a role. And what I find is that these exogenous cost of language are complimentary to incentives, meaning that if I allow a person to speak their native language, but I also incentivize this person to provide high effort, then the overall increasing quality is much higher. So I find an increase by 118 percent, and also there is a complementarity with the questionnaire
00:08:24 - So the question quality. So if, the question quality is higher, the impact of being able to use the native language is actually even larger. So this shows overall that there is a positive effect of allowing people, to use the native language in their communication quality. On the, on the downside, what I find is that the new joiners, so join, so users that started participating only when the native
00:08:56 - So these that were not able to participate in English, but were able to participate in their native language, this user, you know, in fact produce lower quality answers compared to users that were already active in English. So what the, the kind of mechanism that I, I, I suggest to explain this fact is that whenever users are only able to use English, they face the cost of using a foreign language.

Impact of Language on User Participation Quality

00:09:30 - subject, then they will still participate. While, while if users are not native in English, then they are not expert, then they will not participate. Nevertheless, these users that are not expert are now able to participate because they can use their native language. So to some, to some extent, what I'm saying is that the language cost, the language friction act as a,
00:10:01 - So users that, have higher expertise, even if they have a high cost of language, will still participate in English while user with low expertise will not. So basically allowing users to use their native language will induce low, less, less expert user to start participating. So this is kind of a downside for the platform because, while improved communication quality from the first set of users now is bringing in more users
00:10:31 - So first of all, there are policy implication for the platform. So the platform now platform, no, that I call knowledge platform platform that rely on on users that come from all, all over the world, that face this, this problem of having information aggregated from, from the people that speak different languages, you know, face this challenge, and the main policy implications that yes, that affects the quality. I mean, the fact that these users cannot use the native language affects the quality of their communication
00:11:01 - So indeed, if the quality is really one of the major concern of the platform, they should allow users to use the native languages. And this is a bit what we see in Wikipedia, which, finally has allowed all other language to appear out there, because other, they care a lot about quality and they have less, problem other dimensions. At the same time, we have this problem that, the, they allow platforms to increase, to, to, to introduce different languages,
00:11:36 - So then the policy implication here is that if the platform has in place a very strong moderation, program, then, then that should not be a big problem, right? And then should compensate. And so the platform may still want to have as many Languages as possible and then moderate very well, so that all these type of lower quality content are, are faded out. but if this is not the case,
00:12:06 - to keep fewer languages so that the barriers will still prevent not too much participation from less expert users. So these are kind of main policy implications for this specific platform. Then of course, you know, it's always the kind of the big challenge for economists to draw more general conclusions. And of course, the settings may not allow complete external validity to other settings, but I will. But overall, this paper suggests that

Managing Communication Friction in Multinational Teams

00:12:58 - or when teams are multinational and there are different people working from different countries and so on, then these are factors that should be taken into account, right? So, there are communication friction, they exist and they provide the potential, information quality effects. So the, the companies and organizations should take that into account when they build teams and multinational, multinational, interactions.

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