Attribute Non-attendance as an Information Processing Strategy in Stated Preference Choice Experiments: Origins, Current Practices, and Future Directions

Stated preference discrete choice experiments (CE) are increasingly being used by researchers seeking to understand people’s preferences and values in environmental economics, transportation, health, and marketing. An active CE research area relates to behaviors that break from the assumptions of full rationality assumed in standard discrete choice models. In particular, considerable attention in recent years has been on attribute non-attendance (ANA), a type of choice behavior where individuals ignore one or more attributes in CE questions. In this article, we delve into the origins and motivations for the study of ANA as an information processing strategy, delineate the variety of approaches that have developed in the growing literature to identify and account for ANA behavior, and discuss several promising directions for this literature that could enhance our understanding of decision-making in CE studies.