IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03421574.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How choice proliferation affects revealed preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Fabrice Le Lec

    (LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Lille)

  • Marianne Lumeau

    (UA - Université d'Angers, GRANEM - Groupe de Recherche Angevin en Economie et Management - UA - Université d'Angers - AGROCAMPUS OUEST - Institut National de l'Horticulture et du Paysage)

  • Benoît Tarroux

    (UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Whereas the literature on choice overload has shown that people tend to defer their choice or experience less satisfaction under choice proliferation, this paper aims to test how the profusion of choice directly affects individuals' revealed preferences over options. To do so, we run an experiment where subjects have to compare familiar (i.e., easy, salient and relatively safe) and unfamiliar options under different choice contexts (Large or Small choice sets). We hypothesize that, as the choice set expands, the decisions become harder and more costly and subjects may find familiar items relatively more attractive. Our results provide clear evidence of set size dependence of revealed preferences: Subjects prefer familiar items more frequently in larger choice sets. This evidence is robust to a number of experimental variations and statistical controls.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabrice Le Lec & Marianne Lumeau & Benoît Tarroux, 2021. "How choice proliferation affects revealed preferences," Post-Print hal-03421574, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03421574
    DOI: 10.1007/s11238-021-09848-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beshears, John & Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C., 2013. "Simplification and saving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 130-145.
    2. Simonson, Itamar, 1989. "Choice Based on Reasons: The Case of Attraction and Compromise Effects," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(2), pages 158-174, September.
    3. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2012. "Categorize Then Choose: Boundedly Rational Choice And Welfare," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1141-1165, October.
    4. Buturak, Gökhan & Evren, Özgür, 2017. "Choice overload and asymmetric regret," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), September.
    5. Loomes, Graham & Sugden, Robert, 1982. "Regret Theory: An Alternative Theory of Rational Choice under Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 805-824, December.
    6. Deacue Fields & Walt Prevatt, 2008. "An Incentive Compatible Conjoint Ranking Mechanism," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(2), pages 487-498.
    7. Georgios Gerasimou, 2018. "Indecisiveness, Undesirability and Overload Revealed Through Rational Choice Deferral," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(614), pages 2450-2479, September.
    8. , & ,, 2013. "Choice by iterative search," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(3), September.
    9. Ben Irons & Cameron Hepburn, 2007. "Regret Theory and the Tyranny of Choice," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 83(261), pages 191-203, June.
    10. Lleras, Juan Sebastián & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan & Nakajima, Daisuke & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2017. "When more is less: Limited consideration," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 70-85.
    11. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    12. William T. Harbaugh & Kate Krause & Timothy R. Berry, 2001. "GARP for Kids: On the Development of Rational Choice Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1539-1545, December.
    13. Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman & Douglas Gale & Shachar Kariv, 2007. "Consistency, Heterogeneity, and Granularity of Individual Behavior under Uncertainty," Economics Working Papers 0076, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    14. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    15. Elena Reutskaja & Rosemarie Nagel & Colin F. Camerer & Antonio Rangel, 2011. "Search Dynamics in Consumer Choice under Time Pressure: An Eye-Tracking Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 900-926, April.
    16. Cass R. Sunstein & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 48(Jun).
    17. Sugden Robert, 1993. "An Axiomatic Foundation for Regret Theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 159-180, June.
    18. Jiwoong Shin & Dan Ariely, 2004. "Keeping Doors Open: The Effect of Unavailability on Incentives to Keep Options Viable," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(5), pages 575-586, May.
    19. Todd Sarver, 2008. "Anticipating Regret: Why Fewer Options May Be Better," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(2), pages 263-305, March.
    20. Syngjoo Choi & Raymond Fisman & Douglas Gale & Shachar Kariv, 2007. "Consistency and Heterogeneity of Individual Behavior under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1921-1938, December.
    21. Simon, Herbert A, 1979. "Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(4), pages 493-513, September.
    22. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    23. Henrik Cronqvist & Richard H. Thaler, 2004. "Design Choices in Privatized Social-Security Systems: Learning from the Swedish Experience," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 424-428, May.
    24. Benjamin Scheibehenne & Rainer Greifeneder & Peter M. Todd, 2010. "Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(3), pages 409-425, October.
    25. Nitin Mehta & Surendra Rajiv & Kannan Srinivasan, 2003. "Price Uncertainty and Consumer Search: A Structural Model of Consideration Set Formation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 58-84, June.
    26. Yuval Salant & Ariel Rubinstein, 2008. "(A, f): Choice with Frames -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(4), pages 1287-1296.
    27. Elena Reutskaja & Axel Lindner & Rosemarie Nagel & Richard A. Andersen & Colin F. Camerer, 2018. "Choice overload reduces neural signatures of choice set value in dorsal striatum and anterior cingulate cortex," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(12), pages 925-935, December.
    28. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D. & Combs, T. Dalton & Kodaverdian, Niree, 2019. "Consistency in simple vs. complex choices by younger and older adults," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 580-601.
    29. Hausman, Jerry A. & Ruud, Paul A., 1987. "Specifying and testing econometric models for rank-ordered data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 83-104.
    30. Hauser, John R & Wernerfelt, Birger, 1990. "An Evaluation Cost Model of Consideration Sets," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(4), pages 393-408, March.
    31. Thomas Leonard, 2008. "Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 356-360, December.
    32. Sen, Amartya, 1993. "Internal Consistency of Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 495-521, May.
    33. Sippel, Reinhard, 1997. "An Experiment on the Pure Theory of Consumer's Behaviour," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(444), pages 1431-1444, September.
    34. Iyengar, Sheena S. & Kamenica, Emir, 2010. "Choice proliferation, simplicity seeking, and asset allocation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 530-539, August.
    35. 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.
    36. Fabrice Le Lec & Benoît Tarroux, 2020. "On Attitudes to Choice: Some Experimental Evidence on Choice Aversion [Freedom to Veto]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(5), pages 2108-2134.
    37. Saurabh Bhargava & George Loewenstein & Justin Sydnor, 2017. "Choose to Lose: Health Plan Choices from a Menu with Dominated Option," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1319-1372.
    38. Chernev, Alexander, 2003. "When More Is Less and Less Is More: The Role of Ideal Point Availability and Assortment in Consumer Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(2), pages 170-183, September.
    39. Dean, Mark & Kıbrıs, Özgür & Masatlioglu, Yusufcan, 2017. "Limited attention and status quo bias," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 93-127.
    40. James Andreoni & John Miller, 2002. "Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 737-753, March.
    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. Fabrice Le Lec & Marianne Lumeau & Benoît Tarroux, 2016. "Choice or information overload ?," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 2016-07, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
    2. Caliari, Daniele, 2023. "Behavioural welfare analysis and revealed preference: Theory and experimental evidence," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2023-303, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Yukinori Iwata, 2023. "Evaluating opportunities when more is less," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 109-130, July.
    4. Müller, Daniel, 2019. "The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 785-807.
    5. Maltz, Amnon & Rachmilevitch, Shiran, 2021. "A model of menu-dependent evaluations and comparison-aversion," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    6. Daniel Burghart & Paul Glimcher & Stephanie Lazzaro, 2013. "An expected utility maximizer walks into a bar..," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 215-246, June.
    7. Liang Guo, 2016. "Contextual Deliberation and Preference Construction," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(10), pages 2977-2993, October.
    8. Kops, Christopher, 2022. "Cluster-shortlisted choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    9. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Elchin Suleymanov, 2021. "Decision making within a product network," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 185-209, February.
    10. Klimm, Felix & Kocher, Martin G. & Opitz, Timm & Schudy, Simeon, 2023. "Time pressure and regret in sequential search," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 406-424.
    11. Daniel Müller, 2017. "The anatomy of distributional preferences with group identity," Working Papers 2017-02, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck, revised Mar 2017.
    12. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D. & Combs, T. Dalton & Kodaverdian, Niree, 2019. "The development of consistent decision-making across economic domains," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 217-240.
    13. Gerasimou, Georgios & Papi, Mauro, 2018. "Duopolistic competition with choice-overloaded consumers," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 330-353.
    14. Alfio Giarlotta & Angelo Petralia & Stephen Watson, 2022. "Semantics meets attractiveness: Choice by salience," Papers 2204.08798, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    15. Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Daisuke Nakajima & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2012. "Revealed Attention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2183-2205, August.
    16. Heufer, Jan, 2014. "Nonparametric comparative revealed risk aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 569-616.
    17. Özgür Kıbrıs & Yusufcan Masatlioglu & Elchin Suleymanov, 2023. "A theory of reference point formation," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(1), pages 137-166, January.
    18. Geoffroy de Clippel, 2014. "Behavioral Implementation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(10), pages 2975-3002, October.
    19. Abhinash Borah & Christopher Kops, 2018. "Choice via Social Influence," Working Papers 06, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    20. Brocas, Isabelle & Carrillo, Juan D. & Combs, T. Dalton & Kodaverdian, Niree, 2019. "Consistency in simple vs. complex choices by younger and older adults," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 580-601.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hal:journl:hal-03421574. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.