Handling respondent uncertainty in Choice Experiments: Evaluating recoding approaches against explicit modelling of uncertainty

By Thomas Lundhede, S. B. Olsen, Jette Bredahl Jacobsen, B. Thorsen. 2009

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Using data from two Choice Experiment environmental valuation surveys we investigate several different ways of handling respondent uncertainty. In both surveys respondents are asked to state their certainty of choice after each single choice set. We evaluate three different recoding-of-answers methods adapted from the Contingent Valuation literature. Furthermore, we evaluate two models which directly capture the effect of respondent uncertainty by parameterization of a scale function. In one model the scale parameter is a function of respondents' stated uncertainty level. In the other it is a function of respondent and choice set characteristics found to be significant determinants of stated uncertainty. All approaches are compared to a benchmark utility model. While some of the recoding approaches apparently reduce noise in the data, they generally have no significant effect on attribute Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) estimates, and standard errors on WTP estimates tend to increase. The explicit modelling of the scale parameter using stated uncertainty reveals that unobserved variation decreases as certainty of choice increases. While the model performance does not improve much, this approach offers a structurally and intuitively much more appealing way of accounting for uncertainty in choices in CE.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d35d8ce519ed51b0c9cff1eca44cedac6699563b

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Citations in the corpus

Attribute Processing, Heuristics, and Preference Construction in Choice Analysis (2009, background): “See Lundhede et al. (2009).”
Attending to the Reasons for Attribute Non-attendance in Choice Experiments (2011, background): “A general parameterisation of the scale function is (Hensher et al. 2005b; Lundhede et al. 2009; Scarpa et al. 2003):”
Choosing Between Internet and Mail Survey Modes for Choice Experiment Surveys Considering Non-Market Goods (2009, background): “Considering the positive correlation between certainty in choice and estimation precision established in Lundhede et al. (2009), this result is at odds with the fact that, when asked directly, internet respondents state a generally higher level of certainty in their choices.”
Hypothetical bias in stated choice experiments: Part II. Macro-scale analysis of literature and effectiveness of bias mitigation methods (2021, methodology): “Adopting choice certainty calibration in the domain of choice experiments for environmental valuation, Lundhede et al. (2009) presented different ways of handling uncertain responses, including accommodating stated uncertainties in the scale parameter and treating it as a function of response…”