Discrete Choice Experiments Are Not Conjoint Analysis

By Jordan J. Louviere, Terry N. Flynn, Richard T. Carson. 2010

707 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We briefly review and discuss traditional conjoint analysis (CA) and discrete choice experiments (DCEs), widely used stated preference elicitation methods in several disciplines. We pay particular attention to the origins and basis of CA, and show that it is generally inconsistent with economic demand theory, and is subject to several logical inconsistencies that make it unsuitable for use in applied economics, particularly welfare and policy assessment. We contrast this with DCEs that have a long-standing, well-tested theoretical basis in random utility theory, and we show why and how DCEs are more general and consistent with economic demand theory. Perhaps the major message, though, is that many studies that claim to be doing conjoint analysis are really doing DCE.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Decision Sciences, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f90dcb2e66877c8f5b1392ef154f6ecbebac313

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Citations in the corpus

Best-worst scaling: theory and methods (2014, positive): “In fact, various empirical work on the maxdiff model gives a linear relation between the (best minus worst) scores and the (maximum likelihood) estimates of the utilities5 (Louviere et al., 2008, 2012). Also, Marley and Islam (2012) show similar results for weighted utility ranking models applied to”
Constructing experimental designs for discrete-choice experiments: report of the ISPOR Conjoint Analysis Experimental Design Good Research Practices Task Force. (2013, background): “are directed to several systematic reviews of conjoint-analysis applications in health care [5–13] and several methodological reviews [6,14–18].”
Keep it local and fish-friendly: Social acceptance of hydropower projects in Switzerland (2017, background): “The theoretical background of DCE is derived from classic random utility theory, which assumes that individuals seek to maximize their utility [33].”
Contemporary Guidance for Stated Preference Studies (2017, methodology): “We do not recommend the use of these and other conjoint response formats, as such formats face multiple challenges in the context of utility-theoretic welfare estimation (Louviere et al. 2010).”