Alós-Ferrer Carlos, Granic Georg D
Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics (ZNE), Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Department of Applied Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Exp Econ. 2023;26(3):499-521. doi: 10.1007/s10683-021-09728-5. Epub 2021 Aug 15.
Widespread evidence from psychology and neuroscience documents that previous choices unconditionally increase the later desirability of chosen objects, even if those choices were uninformative. This is problematic for economists who use choice data to estimate latent preferences, demand functions, and social welfare. The evidence on this , however, exhibits serious shortcomings which prevent evaluating its possible relevance for economics. In this paper, we present a novel, parsimonious experimental design to test for the economic validity of the mere choice effect addressing these shortcomings. Our design uses well-defined, monetary lotteries, all decisions are incentivized, and we effectively randomize participants' initial choices without relying on deception. Results from a large, pre-registered online experiment find no support for the mere choice effect. Our results challenge conventional wisdom outside economics. The mere choice effect does not seem to be a concern for economics, at least in the domain of decision making under risk.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10683-021-09728-5.
心理学和神经科学的广泛证据表明，先前的选择会无条件地增加所选对象后来的吸引力，即使这些选择并无信息价值。这给使用选择数据来估计潜在偏好、需求函数和社会福利的经济学家带来了问题。然而，关于这一点的证据存在严重缺陷，阻碍了对其与经济学可能相关性的评估。在本文中，我们提出了一种新颖、简洁的实验设计，以检验单纯选择效应的经济有效性，解决这些缺陷。我们的设计使用定义明确的货币彩票，所有决策都有激励措施，并且我们有效地随机化参与者的初始选择，而不依赖欺骗手段。一项大型的、预先注册的在线实验结果并未支持单纯选择效应。我们的结果挑战了经济学之外的传统观点。单纯选择效应似乎并非经济学的一个问题，至少在风险决策领域是这样。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s10683-021-09728-5获取的补充材料。
