Classic mechanism/information design imposes the assumption that agents are fully rational, meaning each of them always selects the action that maximizes her expected utility. Yet many empirical evidence suggests that human decisions may deviate from this full rationality assumption. In this work, we attempt to relax the full rationality assumption with bounded rationality. Specifically, we formulate the bounded rationality of an agent by adopting the quantal response model (McKelvey and Palfrey, 1995). We develop a theory of rationality-robust information design in the canonical setting of Bayesian persuasion (Kamenica and Gentzkow, 2011) with binary receiver action. We first identify conditions under which the optimal signaling scheme structure for a fully rational receiver remains optimal or approximately optimal for a boundedly rational receiver. In practice, it might be costly for the designer to estimate the degree of the receiver's bounded rationality level. Motivated by this practical consideration, we then study the existence and construction of robust signaling schemes when there is uncertainty about the receiver's bounded rationality level.

翻译：经典机制/信息设计假设主体完全理性，即每个主体始终选择最大化其期望效用的行动。然而大量实证证据表明，人类决策可能偏离这一完全理性假设。本研究尝试用有限理性假设来放松完全理性假设。具体而言，我们采用量子响应模型（McKelvey和Palfrey, 1995）来刻画主体的有限理性。我们在二元接收者行动的贝叶斯劝说经典框架（Kamenica和Gentzkow, 2011）下，发展了一套理性鲁棒的信息设计理论。我们首先识别出在何种条件下，针对完全理性接收者的最优信号方案结构对有限理性接收者仍然保持最优性或近似最优性。在实践中，设计者估计接收者有限理性程度可能代价高昂。基于这一实际考虑，我们随后研究了当接收者有限理性程度存在不确定性时，鲁棒信号方案的存在性与构造问题。