Search Heuristics in Individual Decision-Making

Venue

Room 9, Department of Sociology and Social Research – via Verdi 26, Trento
at 14.00

Speakers

Dr. Mauro Papi – University of Aberdeen

Abstract 

Over the last years innovative online choice platforms, such as product configurators and web-search engines by product characteristics, have been developed to facilitate the consumers' problem by forcing them to use specific choice procedures. These choice procedures, also called search heuristics, define the way in which a decision-maker explores multi-attribute alternatives in a choice problem. So far experimental economics has focused its attention on examining which choice procedures better describe subjects' behaviour. In contrast, we investigate whether inducing subjects to use a particular search heuristic has an effect on their welfare. We propose a between-subject experimental design to test this research question and provide evidence that this is indeed the case.