How Many Options? Behavioral Responses to Two versus Five Alternatives per Choice

What is an appropriate number of alternatives per choice task? Why are two or five alternatives so rarely used? We characterize the contexts where Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) on pairs makes sense when projecting to real decisions and use eye-tracking to study how respondents search for information when answering choice tasks with either two or five alternatives.

[1]  Michael Schulte-Mecklenbeck,et al.  The role of process data in the development and testing of process models of judgment and decision making , 2011 .

[2]  Peter M. Todd,et al.  How much information do we need? , 2007, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[3]  Martin Meißner,et al.  Eye-Tracking Information Processing in Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis , 2010 .

[4]  Jordan J. Louviere,et al.  Design and Analysis of Simulated Consumer Choice or Allocation Experiments: An Approach Based on Aggregate Data , 1983 .

[5]  John W. Payne,et al.  Task complexity and contingent processing in decision making: An information search and protocol analysis☆ , 1976 .

[6]  The CBC System for Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis , 2013 .

[7]  John W. Payne,et al.  A Constructive Process View of Decision Making: Multiple Strategies in Judgment and Choice , 1992 .

[8]  Peter Boatwright,et al.  A Satisficing Choice Model , 2012, Mark. Sci..

[9]  E. N. Kondratyeva.  Consumer decision-making process , 2017 .

[10]  K. Rayner.  Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. , 1998, Psychological bulletin.

[11]  Ulf Böckenholt,et al.  Caveats on a process-tracing measure and a remedy , 1994 .

[12]  John R. Hauser,et al.  Testing the Accuracy, Usefulness, and Significance of Probabilistic Choice Models: An Information-Theoretic Approach , 1978, Oper. Res..

[13]  B. Dosher,et al.  Strategies for multiattribute binary choice. , 1983, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[14]  Martin Meißner,et al.  Eye Tracking Reveals Processes that Enable Conjoint Choices to Become Increasingly Efficient with Practice , 2016 .

[15]  Olivier Toubia,et al.  A Bounded Rationality Model of Information Search and Choice in Preference Measurement , 2014 .

[16]  Boris M. Velichkovsky,et al.  Towards an express-diagnostics for level of processing and hazard perception , 2002 .

[17]  Jacob L. Orquin,et al.  Learning affects top down and bottom up modulation of eye movements in decision making , 2013, Judgment and Decision Making.

[18]  Jordan J. Louviere,et al.  A Comparison of Experimental Design Strategies for Multinomial Logit Models : The Case of Generic Attributes , 2001 .

[19]  Alan Kennedy,et al.  Book Review: Eye Tracking: A Comprehensive Guide to Methods and Measures , 2016, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[20]  J. Ford,et al.  Process tracing methods: Contributions, problems, and neglected research questions , 1989 .