Research Colloquium - Too much choice? An experimental investigation
Time
Tuesday, 15. January 2019
15:15 - 16:45
Location
F425
Organizer
Chair of Applied Research in Economics
Speaker:
Robin Cubitt (University of Nottingham)
Too much choice? An experimental investigation
with Chris Starmer and Joerg Weber
Abstract
The idea of choice overload (i.e. roughly, that having too much choice can be bad for you) has attracted considerable attention in the consumer psychology and marketing literatures since 2000. Yet it is at odds with most economic theory (and principles of constrained optimisation) and indeed seemingly with some salient aspects of the contemporary economy. Robin Cubitt’s talk will present joint work in progress with Chris Starmer and Joerg Weber that is motivated by this tension. It will present results from two laboratory experiments that investigate the existence, determinants and mechanisms of choice overload in a decision making environment that stylises some key aspects of consumer search and product selection. Potential factors underlying choice overload are manipulated within and across the experimental designs of the two studies. A distinctive feature of our approach, common to both studies, is that our main measure of subjects “performance” in the main tasks is based, where appropriate, on an empirically grounded view of each subject’s own preferences.