Selected attitudes of market participants with respect to information gaps in real estate market Cover Image

Wybrane postawy uczestników rynku wobec braków informacyjnych na rynku nieruchomości
Selected attitudes of market participants with respect to information gaps in real estate market

Author(s): Justyna Brzezicka, Radosław Wiśniewski
Subject(s): Economy
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego we Wrocławiu
Keywords: real estate market; information gaps; conformity; heuristic availability; self-attribution bias

Summary/Abstract: The present article deals with selected attitudes of market participants with respect to information gaps in real estate market. Real estate markets have recently become “active players” on an international scale. This situation leads to a careful observation of phenomena that occur on real estate markets. Nonetheless, information gaps prevent the smooth functioning of the markets in which information serves as a source of many processes. The lack of reliable, complete and current information about real estate prices makes market entities prone to search for the prices and succumb to substitute strategies that compensate the information gaps. The thesis of the present article concentrates on information gaps in the real estate market as favourable conditions for occurring the phenomenon of social influence. The hypothesis was formulated as follows: informational conformity as a factor affecting real estate price. The paper consists of two integral parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical part concentrates on the phenomenon of social influence on real estate market which results from information gaps. Furthermore, the concept of social influence has been explained in detail. The phenomenon of social influence is defined as a situation in which entities lack proper knowledge how to react, what decision to take or what position to adopt in a particular contention, thus those entities depend on other people’s knowledge assuming that they know how to behave or that their knowledge is more accurate. As a result, the afore-mentioned entities copy behaviour noticed in others. Moreover, in the theoretical part the concepts of self-attribution bias and heuristic availability have been presented as well as their importance in the system of real estate market. The aim of the practical part was to verify whether the participants of real estate market were influenced by informational conformity. The research was conducted among the students of the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn and Kielce School of Economics, Tourism and Social Sciences. The subject matter was to verify prices of commercial and residential properties in Olsztyn and Kielce and price trends in those markets. In a planned experiment students worked in groups of six (one leader and five participants). Each team was to persuade a leader to accept the price of a particular property and to design a market trend according to the belief of the group. An opinion survey was used as a tool of research. The undertaken study allowed to achieve the research aim and confirm the research hypothesis. The most important conclusions are as follows: information gaps in real estate market contribute to emerging the phenomenon of informational conformity, which is not indifferent to real estate prices and decisions of market participants. Taking into consideration the specificity of the real estate market and the occurrence of other bahavioural factors, a tendency among entities to follow the fo

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 02
  • Page Range: 106-121
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish