IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/medema/v32y2012i6p815-819.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Context of Available Options Affects Health Care Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Florence Dumas
  • Michel Gonzalez
  • Vittorio Girotto
  • Christophe Pascal
  • Jean-François Botton
  • Vincenzo Crupi

Abstract

Background. When a given option is presented along with 2 alternatives, similar to each other, health care professionals choose it more often than when it is presented with just one of the alternatives. This inconsistent decision pattern may depend on the conflict generated from choosing between 2 highly similar options. Objective. To generalize the effect by using realistic scenarios that involve 2 alternatives displaying various degrees of similarity. Methods. One hundred fifty-five psychiatrists, 149 gynecologists, and 89 nurse managers had to indicate the treatment they would recommend in clinical scenarios containing either 3 options or just 2 of them. The similarity between the 2 alternatives varied across scenarios, ranging from a very high (psychiatric scenario) to an only moderately high (nursing management scenario) to a limited level (gynecological scenario). Results. Professionals chose the focal option more often when both alternatives were available. The paradoxical effect occurred for all scenarios—namely, when the alternatives were medication variants (psychiatric scenario), when most of the features they shared produced their effect at a different extent in the 2 cases (nursing management scenario), and some of their consequences were at variance (gynecological problem). Conclusions. The context of available options affects professionals’ choices when the alternatives are similar but also when they present diverging features. Professionals need to be aware of such a source of practice variability and are encouraged to consider each option per se before they compare the available options.

Suggested Citation

  • Florence Dumas & Michel Gonzalez & Vittorio Girotto & Christophe Pascal & Jean-François Botton & Vincenzo Crupi, 2012. "The Context of Available Options Affects Health Care Decisions," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 32(6), pages 815-819, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:32:y:2012:i:6:p:815-819
    DOI: 10.1177/0272989X12445285
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X12445285
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0272989X12445285?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huber, Joel & Payne, John W & Puto, Christopher, 1982. "Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives: Violations of Regularity and the Similarity Hypothesis," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 9(1), pages 90-98, June.
    2. Ariely, Dan & Wallsten, Thomas S., 1995. "Seeking Subjective Dominance in Multidimensional Space: An Explanation of the Asymmetric Dominance Effect," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 223-232, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Nasim Mousavi & Panagiotis Adamopoulos & Jesse Bockstedt, 2023. "The Decoy Effect and Recommendation Systems," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 1533-1553, December.
    2. Castillo, Geoffrey, 2020. "The attraction effect and its explanations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 123-147.
    3. Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Uler, Neslihan, 2013. "Understanding the reference effect," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 403-423.
    4. Guevara, C. Angelo & Fukushi, Mitsuyoshi, 2016. "Modeling the decoy effect with context-RUM Models: Diagrammatic analysis and empirical evidence from route choice SP and mode choice RP case studies," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 93(PA), pages 318-337.
    5. Paolo Crosetto & Alexia Gaudeul, 2011. "Do consumers prefer offers that are easy to compare? An experimental investigation," Jena Economics Research Papers 2011-044, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:10:y:2015:i:5:p:503-510 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. George D. Farmer & Wael El-Deredy & Andrew Howes & Paul A. Warren, 2015. "The attraction effect in motor planning decisions," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 10(5), pages 503-510, September.
    8. Nosratabadi, Hassan, 2022. "Reference-dependent choice under plurality rule," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 88-98.
    9. Linhai Wu & Pingping Liu & Xiujuan Chen & Wuyang Hu & Xuesen Fan, 2021. "Contents of product attributes and the decoy effect: A study on traceable pork from the perspective of consumer utility," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(4), pages 974-984, June.
    10. Gaudeul, Alexia & Crosetto, Paolo, 2019. "Fast then slow: A choice process explanation for the attraction effect," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 386, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    11. Pettibone, Jonathan C. & Wedell, Douglas H., 2000. "Examining Models of Nondominated Decoy Effects across Judgment and Choice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 300-328, March.
    12. Heydari, Pedram, 2021. "Luce arbitrates: Stochastic resolution of inner conflicts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 33-74.
    13. Matthew Kovach & Gerelt Tserenjigmid, 2023. "The Focal Quantal Response Equilibrium," Papers 2304.00438, arXiv.org.
    14. Gonzalez-Prieto, David & Sallan, Jose M. & Simo, Pep & Carrion, Raimon, 2013. "Effects of the addition of simple and double decoys on the purchasing process of airline tickets," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 39-45.
    15. Francesco Rigoli & Christoph Mathys & Karl J Friston & Raymond J Dolan, 2017. "A unifying Bayesian account of contextual effects in value-based choice," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-28, October.
    16. Mohr, Peter N. C. & Heekeren, Hauke R. & Rieskamp, Jörg, 2017. "Attraction Effect in Risky Choice Can Be Explained by Subjective Distance Between Choice Alternatives," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 7, pages 1-10.
    17. Pronobesh Banerjee, 2020. "Stimulus Characteristics and Attraction Effect: Role of qualitative and quantitative attribute values," Working papers 357, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.
    18. Bonaccio, Silvia & Reeve, Charlie L., 2006. "Consideration of preference shifts due to relative attribute variability," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 200-214, November.
    19. Handberg, Øyvind Nystad, 2018. "No sense of ownership in weak participation: a forest conservation experiment in Tanzania," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 434-451, August.
    20. Colman, Andrew M. & Pulford, Briony D. & Bolger, Fergus, 2007. "Asymmetric dominance and phantom decoy effects in games," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 193-206, November.
    21. Kurt A. Carlson & Samuel D. Bond, 2006. "Improving Preference Assessment: Limiting the Effect of Context Through Pre-exposure to Attribute Levels," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(3), pages 410-421, March.

    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:sae:medema:v:32:y:2012:i:6:p:815-819. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.