Popularity in location games

Abstract: We study a variant of the Hotelling-Downs model of spatial competition between firms where consumer choices are influenced by their individual preferences as well as the popularity of the firms. In general, a multiplicity of market equilibria might exist due to the popularity effect. To elucidate firm decision-making, we explore three distinct behavioral attitudes towards this multiplicity of equilibria: optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic. For each behavior, we characterize the set of Nash equilibria and measure the impact of the selfish behavior on the social welfare by means of the price of anarchy and price of stability.