Attitudes toward choice with incomplete preferences: An experimental study

Ritxar Arlegi, Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, Mikel Hualde

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We present an experiment to test different individual attitudes toward choice, such as preference for flexibility, choice aversion, betweenness and choice neutrality. Unlike other related experimental papers, we want to analyze whether different choice attitudes can coexist for the same subject, depending on the characteristics of the choice set she is facing. In particular, our main hypothesis is that the presence of incomparability among the alternatives in the choice set, and the time at which such incomparability is solved, affect crucially the kind of attitude towards choice that the subject will exhibit. We find that, indeed, choice attitudes are not homogeneous across choice sets, yet they are conditional on the preferences over the alternatives. We also find some evidence supporting that subjects tend to value heuristically sets as a whole.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)663-679
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume204
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)

Keywords

  • Choice aversion
  • Incomplete preferences
  • Preference for flexibility

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Economics and Econometrics
  • Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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