Communication is a natural activity to gain information and exchange ideas for making proper economic decisions. The mechanism of social interaction remains inadequately understood. Previous studies have investigated the consequences of communication under a one-way information transmission mechanism from more-informed leaders to less-informed followers. This mechanism leads to the “boomerang effect”—a reduction in leaders’ forecasting efficiency due to the information transmission. However, communication should be interactive. This paper devises a two-stage interactive cobweb model with a generalized information diffusion process called the bi-directional information diffusion (BID) process, which allows both information transmission and feedback mechanisms. Numerical analysis and simulations show that the model has multiple equilibria and can be dynamically stable under certain conditions. More importantly, the BID process improves forecast efficiency for all individuals, and the boomerang effect disappears if leaders correctly observe followers’ forecasts to revise their expectations.

沟通是获取信息和交流想法以做出正确经济决策的自然活动。社会互动的机制仍未得到充分理解。先前的研究已经调查了在从信息较多的领导者到信息较少的追随者的单向信息传输机制下沟通的后果。这种机制导致了“回旋镖效应”——由于信息传递导致领导者预测效率的降低。然而，沟通应该是互动的。本文设计了一个两阶段交互式蜘蛛网模型，该模型具有称为双向信息扩散 (BID) 过程的广义信息扩散过程，它允许信息传输和反馈机制。数值分析和仿真表明，该模型具有多个平衡点，在一定条件下可以保持动态稳定。更重要的是，BID 过程提高了所有个人的预测效率，如果领导者正确观察追随者的预测以修正他们的期望，回旋镖效应就会消失。