IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v147y2018icp65-75.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Choosing for others and its relation to information search

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Yi
  • Polman, Evan
  • Liu, Yongfang
  • Jiao, Jiangli

Abstract

When people make choices, they both identify their options and research the unique details that comprise their options. Respectively, these two search behaviors are called alternative- and attribute-search. The literature treats these separate information search behaviors as a trade-off: Choosing to examine extant alternatives (alternative-search) means suffering the costs of not analyzing the details of alternatives (attribute-search), and vice versa. Here, we found that in choices people make for others, they search for more alternatives and more attributes than in choices people make for themselves. Moreover, we found that when people face a trade-off between searching for alternatives and attributes, people choosing for others will favor alternatives, whereas people choosing for themselves will favor attributes. Thus, we found that the pursuit of information is different when people choose for others (vs. themselves), suggesting a novel pivot to a range of areas in decision making where the alternative-attribute trade-off is ubiquitous.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Yi & Polman, Evan & Liu, Yongfang & Jiao, Jiangli, 2018. "Choosing for others and its relation to information search," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 65-75.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:147:y:2018:i:c:p:65-75
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.05.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597817302923
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.05.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ola Andersson & Håkan J. Holm & Jean-Robert Tyran & Erik Wengström, 2016. "Deciding for Others Reduces Loss Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 29-36, January.
    2. Andrew D. Gershoff & Jonathan J. Koehler, 2011. "Safety First? The Role of Emotion in Safety Product Betrayal Aversion," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 38(1), pages 140-150.
    3. Rui (Juliet) Zhu & Joan Meyers-Levy, 2007. "Exploring the Cognitive Mechanism that Underlies Regulatory Focus Effects," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(1), pages 89-96, April.
    4. Juliano Laran, 2010. "Goal Management in Sequential Choices: Consumer Choices for Others Are More Indulgent than Personal Choices," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(2), pages 304-314, August.
    5. repec:cup:judgdm:v:11:y:2016:i:1:p:99-113 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Jinhee Choi & B. Kyu Kim & Incheol Choi & Youjae Yi, 2006. "Variety-Seeking Tendency in Choice for Others: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Causes," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(4), pages 590-595, March.
    7. Christoph Engel, 2011. "Dictator games: a meta study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-610, November.
    8. Rebecca W. Hamilton & Debora Viana Thompson, 2007. "Is There a Substitute for Direct Experience? Comparing Consumers' Preferences after Direct and Indirect Product Experiences," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(4), pages 546-555, June.
    9. Bettman, James R & Park, C Whan, 1980. "Effects of Prior Knowledge and Experience and Phase of the Choice Process on Consumer Decision Processes: A Protocol Analysis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 7(3), pages 234-248, December.
    10. Polman, Evan, 2012. "Self–other decision making and loss aversion," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 141-150.
    11. Fenja V Ziegler & Richard J Tunney, 2012. "Decisions for Others Become Less Impulsive the Further Away They Are on the Family Tree," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-5, November.
    12. repec:cup:judgdm:v:2:y:2007:i::p:342-350 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:11:y:2016:i:4:p:332-341 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Kray, Laura J., 2000. "Contingent Weighting in Self-Other Decision Making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 82-106, September.
    15. Crowe, Ellen & Higgins, E. Tory, 1997. "Regulatory Focus and Strategic Inclinations: Promotion and Prevention in Decision-Making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 117-132, February.
    16. Liu, Peggy J. & Campbell, Troy H. & Fitzsimons, Gavan J. & Fitzsimons, Gráinne M., 2013. "Matching choices to avoid offending stigmatized group members," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 291-304.
    17. Lee, Hanjoon & Herr, Paul M. & Kardes, Frank R. & Kim, Chankon, 1999. "Motivated Search: Effects of Choice Accountability, Issue Involvement, and Prior Knowledge on Information Acquisition and Use," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 75-88, May.
    18. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    19. Lu, Jingyi & Xie, Xiaofei, 2014. "To change or not to change: A matter of decision maker’s role," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 47-55.
    20. Yanping Tu & Alex Shaw & Ayelet Fishbach, 2016. "The Friendly Taking Effect: How Interpersonal Closeness Leads to Seemingly Selfish Yet Jointly Maximizing Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(5), pages 669-687.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lane, Tom, 2022. "Intrinsic preferences for unhappy news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 119-130.
    2. Barrafrem, Kinga & Hausfeld, Jan, 2020. "Tracing risky decisions for oneself and others: The role of intuition and deliberation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    3. Weiss-Cohen, Leonardo & Ayton, Peter & Clacher, Iain & Thoma, Volker, 2022. "Pension scheme trustees as surrogate decision makers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    4. Kim, Hyunji & Schnall, Simone, 2021. "Profit for friends, fairness for strangers: Social distance reverses the endowment effect in proxy decision making," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    5. Tajdini, Saeed, 2021. "The effects of the subjective-experiential knowledge gap on consumers’ information search behavior and perceptions of consumption risk," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 66-77.
    6. Polman, Evan & Wu, Kaiyang, 2020. "Decision making for others involving risk: A review and meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    7. Kackovic, Monika & Bun, Maurice J.G. & Weinberg, Charles B. & Ebbers, Joris J. & Wijnberg, Nachoem M., 2020. "Third-party signals and sales to expert-agent buyers: Quality indicators in the contemporary visual arts market," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 587-601.
    8. Freling, Traci H. & Yang, Zhiyong & Saini, Ritesh & Itani, Omar S. & Rashad Abualsamh, Ryan, 2020. "When poignant stories outweigh cold hard facts: A meta-analysis of the anecdotal bias," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 51-67.
    9. Herzenstein, Michal & Dholakia, Utpal M. & Sonenshein, Scott, 2020. "How the number of options affects prosocial choice," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 356-370.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Polman, Evan & Wu, Kaiyang, 2020. "Decision making for others involving risk: A review and meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Polman, Evan, 2012. "Self–other decision making and loss aversion," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 141-150.
    3. Schumacher, Anika & Goukens, Caroline & Geyskens, Kelly, 2021. "Taking care of you and me: How choosing for others impacts self-indulgence within family caregiving relationships," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 715-731.
    4. Ximena Garcia-Rada & Lalin Anik & Dan Ariely, 2019. "Consuming together (versus separately) makes the heart grow fonder," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 27-43, March.
    5. Eraslan, Veysel & Omole, John & Sensoy, Ahmet & Ozdamar, Melisa, 2022. "Other people's money: A comparison of institutional investors," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    6. Weiss-Cohen, Leonardo & Ayton, Peter & Clacher, Iain & Thoma, Volker, 2022. "Pension scheme trustees as surrogate decision makers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    7. Brañas-Garza, Pablo & Jorrat, Diego & Alfonso-Costillo, Antonio & Espín, Antonio M. & Garcia, Teresa & Kovářík, Jaromír, 2020. "Exposure to the Covid-19 pandemic and generosity," MPRA Paper 103389, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Gauriot, Romain & Heger, Stephanie A. & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Altruism or diminishing marginal utility?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 24-48.
    9. Jonathan Chapman & Erik Snowberg & Stephanie Wang & Colin Camerer, 2018. "Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE)," NBER Working Papers 25072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Armin Falk & Anke Becker & Thomas Dohmen & Benjamin Enke & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2018. "Global Evidence on Economic Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1645-1692.
    11. Garcia, Thomas & Massoni, Sébastien & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2020. "Ambiguity and excuse-driven behavior in charitable giving," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    12. Cheng, Yin-Hui & Yen, HsiuJu Rebecca & Chuang, Shih-Chieh & Chang, Chia-Jung, 2013. "Product option framing under the influence of a promotion versus prevention focus," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 402-413.
    13. Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael & Ponti, Giovanni, 2017. "Social motives vs social influence: An experiment on interdependent time preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 177-194.
    14. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    15. repec:cup:judgdm:v:8:y:2013:i:3:p:250-267 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Kling, Luisa & König-Kersting, Christian & Trautmann, Stefan T., 2019. "Investment Preferences and Risk Perception: Financial Agents versus Clients," Working Papers 0674, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    17. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2013. "When do we lie?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 258-265.
    18. Sheheryar Banuri & Stefan Dercon & Varun Gauri, 2019. "Biased Policy Professionals," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 33(2), pages 310-327.
    19. Felix Holzmeister & Martin Holmén & Michael Kirchler & Matthias Stefan & Erik Wengström, 2023. "Delegation Decisions in Finance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4828-4844, August.
    20. Luo, Yong (Eddie) & Wong, Veronica & Chou, Ting-Jui, 2016. "The role of product newness in activating consumer regulatory goals," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 600-611.
    21. de Kwaadsteniet, Erik W. & Gross, Jörg & van Dijk, Eric, 2023. "A “More-is-Better” heuristic in anticommons dilemmas: Psychological insights from a new anticommons bargaining game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:147:y:2018:i:c:p:65-75. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.