Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Eur J Health Econ. 2021 Jul;22(5):679-697. doi: 10.1007/s10198-021-01283-3. Epub 2021 Mar 20.
One core assumption of standard economic theory is that an individual's preferences are stable, irrespective of the method used to elicit them. This assumption may be violated if preference reversals are observed when comparing different methods to elicit people's preferences. People may then prefer A over B using one method while preferring B over A using another. Such preference reversals pose a significant problem for theoretical and applied research. We used a sample of medical and economics students to investigate preference reversals in the health and financial domain when choosing patients/clients. We explored whether preference reversals are associated with domain-relevant training and tested whether using guided 'choice list' elicitation reduces reversals. Our findings suggest that preference reversals were more likely to occur for medical students, within the health domain, and for open-ended valuation questions. Familiarity with a domain reduced the likelihood of preference reversals in that domain. Although preference reversals occur less frequently within specialist domains, they remain a significant theoretical and practical problem. The use of clearer valuation procedures offers a promising approach to reduce preference reversals.
标准经济理论的一个核心假设是，个体的偏好是稳定的，无论用来引出这些偏好的方法如何。如果在比较不同方法来引出人们的偏好时观察到偏好反转，那么这一假设可能会被违反。人们可能会在一种方法下用 A 偏好于 B，而在另一种方法下用 B 偏好于 A。这种偏好反转给理论和应用研究带来了重大问题。我们使用了一组医学和经济学学生的样本，在选择患者/客户时，研究了健康和金融领域的偏好反转。我们探讨了偏好反转是否与领域相关的培训有关，并测试了使用引导的“选择列表” elicitation 是否可以减少反转。我们的研究结果表明，偏好反转更有可能在医学学生中发生，并且在健康领域和开放式估值问题中更有可能发生。对某个领域的熟悉程度降低了该领域发生偏好反转的可能性。尽管在专业领域内偏好反转发生的频率较低，但它们仍然是一个重大的理论和实践问题。使用更清晰的估值程序提供了减少偏好反转的有希望的方法。
