Modes of persuasion toward unanimous consent

Abstract

Copyright © 2018 The Authors. A fully committed sender seeks to sway a collective adoption decision through designing experiments. Voters have correlated payoff states and heterogeneous thresholds of doubt. We characterize the sender-optimal policy under unanimity rule for two persuasion modes. Under general persuasion, evidence presented to each voter depends on all voters' states. The sender makes the most demanding voters indifferent between decisions, while the more lenient voters strictly benefit from persuasion. Under individual persuasion, evidence presented to each voter depends only on her state. The sender designates a subgroup of rubber-stampers, another of fully informed voters, and a third of partially informed voters. The most demanding voters are strategically accorded high-quality information.