Trade-Off Between Accuracy and Cognitive Burden: Influence of Stated Attribute Non-Attendance Questions on Participants' Choice Behaviors

IF 4.7 3区经济学 Q1 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY

Agricultural Economics Pub Date : 2025-10-15 DOI:10.1111/agec.70070

Yefan Nian, Zhifeng Gao, Rodolfo M. Nayga Jr, Yuning Zhao, Joanna Van Asselt

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Past studies have shown that asking stated attribute non-attendance (ANA) questions at the choice task level can improve the accuracy of revealing participants' ANA information in choice experiments (CEs). However, the impact of such questions on CE participants' underlying choice behaviors in subsequent choice tasks remains underexplored. This study assesses whether and to what extent stated ANA questions within CE choice task sequences introduce learning and fatigue effects by influencing participants' behaviors in CEs, including response time, preference elicitation, choice randomness, and willingness-to-pay (WTP). Using a between-subject design by assigning participants to one of three CEs with different types of stated ANA questions, we found that although choice task level stated ANA questions provided more accurate ANA information, they might lead to participants' longer response time, increased choice randomness, and altered WTP estimates with larger standard deviations, possibly due to increased cognitive burden for participants. Meanwhile, a single randomly placed stated ANA question could also influence CE participants' response time and preferences, but have minimal impact on choice randomness. Therefore, CE practitioners should carefully weigh the enhanced accuracy of ANA behavior measurement against potential disruptions to participants' choice behaviors when including stated ANA questions in CEs.

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准确性与认知负担的权衡：陈述属性不出席问题对被试选择行为的影响

已有研究表明，在选择任务层面提出陈述属性不出席问题可以提高选择实验中揭示被试陈述属性不出席信息的准确性。然而，这些问题对CE参与者在后续选择任务中的潜在选择行为的影响仍未得到充分的研究。本研究评估了在CE选择任务序列中陈述的ANA问题是否以及在多大程度上通过影响参与者在CE中的行为来引入学习和疲劳效应，包括反应时间、偏好激发、选择随机性和支付意愿（WTP）。采用受试者间设计，将参与者分配到三个具有不同类型陈述性ANA问题的ce中的一个，我们发现尽管选择任务水平陈述性ANA问题提供了更准确的ANA信息，但它们可能导致参与者的反应时间更长，选择随机性增加，并以更大的标准差改变WTP估计，这可能是由于参与者的认知负担增加。同时，一个随机放置的陈述性ANA问题也会影响CE参与者的反应时间和偏好，但对选择随机性的影响最小。因此，当在CE中包含陈述性ANA问题时，CE从业者应该仔细权衡ANA行为测量的提高准确性和对参与者选择行为的潜在破坏。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Agricultural Economics 管理科学-农业经济与政策

CiteScore

7.30

自引率

4.90%

发文量

审稿时长

3 months

期刊介绍： Agricultural Economics aims to disseminate the most important research results and policy analyses in our discipline, from all regions of the world. Topical coverage ranges from consumption and nutrition to land use and the environment, at every scale of analysis from households to markets and the macro-economy. Applicable methodologies include econometric estimation and statistical hypothesis testing, optimization and simulation models, descriptive reviews and policy analyses. We particularly encourage submission of empirical work that can be replicated and tested by others.