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KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
  • 경제배움
  • Economic

    Information

    and Education

    Center

최신자료
Webmunk: A New Tool for Studying Online Behavior and Digital Platforms
NBER
2024.07.17
Understanding the behavior of users online is important for researchers, policymakers, and private companies alike. But observing online behavior and conducting experiments is difficult without direct access to the user base and software of technology companies. We introduce Webmunk, an open-source tool designed to make conducting online studies much easier. The user-facing side of Webmunk is a browser extension that can track consumer browsing behavior and experimentally modify consumers experiences as they browse the Internet. It can be installed just like any other browser extension, such as ad blockers. Through this extension, researchers can collect a host of consumer data, from URLs to web page HTML elements, clicks, and scroll positions. The extension can also modify information and change the look of a web page, allowing for researchers to implement interventions that vary across study participants. A key advantage of this approach is that interventions occur while participants are engaging in real world activities such as shopping, browsing the news, using social media, or searching for information. We demonstrate the power of Webmunk by discussing two studies in progress.