Pushing subjects beyond rationality with more alternatives in experimental auctions

2018 International Association of Agricultural Economists The use of experimental economics in valuation of market and nonmarket goods has grown over the past few years. The ability of experimental auctions (EUs) to reveal consumer preferences and their malleability has been praised in previous literature. Because of the high cost of conducting EUs, researchers usually present multiple products to participants, determining how many products to present has no clear guideline. The results of this study show that subjects do not value products the same way across different number of options offered to them. The main indicator is the increasing variance in responses for a benchmark product when more products are available. With an econometric specification allowing for heteroscedasticity as a function of the number of product offerings, the results indicate that the number of goods available for bidding is not to be taken as a trivial task in experimental design for value elicitation.

Pushing subjects beyond rationality with more alternatives in experimental auctions Academic Article