Many parents have mixed feelings about the unrestricted use of artificial intelligence (AI) for schoolwork. They are concerned about the potential impact on their child's ability to learn but also don't want them to be left behind if other young people are using AI. A new study involving the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence shows just how much this social pressure is influencing demand. The study entitled "Social Dynamics of AI Adoption in Parents' Educational Decisions" has been published in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
For the study, Professor Christopher Roth from the Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne worked alongside Professors Leonardo Bursztyn and Alex Imas, doctoral candidate Aaron Leonard (University of Chicago) and Assistant Professor Rafael Jiménez-Durán (Bocconi University) to conduct several experiments involving around 2,000 parents from the US, Canada, and the UK. They all had at least one child between the ages of 13 and 18. Parents indicated the maximum amount they would be willing to pay for a three-month premium subscription to an unrestricted AI tool that their child could use for schoolwork.
They were presented with four scenarios in which 20, 40, 60 or 80 per cent of other young people were already using AI to help them with their homework. For every ten-percentage-point increase in the assumed usage, the average willingness to pay rose by 1.83 US dollars. Between the 20 per cent and 80 per cent scenarios, parents' willingness to pay for the AI subscription rose by more than 60 per cent; this equates to around eleven US dollars. Around 20 per cent of parents cited concerns that their children might otherwise fall behind as the reason for their decision.
In addition to information about the short-term benefits of AI, some of the parents were also given information about the long-term risks. They referred to another field study in which pupils were given access to GPT-4 whilst completing a number of maths exercises. In subsequent maths tests without AI, they obtained scores that were just under 20 per cent lower than those of pupils who had practised without using it.
Although this information did change parents' attitudes towards the technology, it had virtually no effect on their willingness to pay. Instead, support for school-wide rules or bans rose from 44 per cent to 57 per cent.
"Our study suggests that social pressure can accelerate the spread of new technologies even before their long-term consequences are fully understood," explains Roth. "Whilst risk information influences parents' assessments, it does not affect their individual willingness to pay to provide their children with better AI models."
ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy
The Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne addresses pressing societal and technological challenges such as global financial crises, rising inequality, political polarization, digitalization and climate change. Researchers from economics and related disciplines work on innovative approaches to analyse markets and public policy and develop responses to such challenges.
