- Title
- The role of time in consumer-like choices
- Creator
- Cavallaro, Jon-Paul
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Consumer decisions present themselves almost every day in our lives and these decisions are often made under time pressure. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether time pressure in consumer-like choice scenarios has an impact on choices and the cognitive processes implicated in choice behaviour. I highlight the benefits that cognitive process models and experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology can provide in applied, consumer choice scenarios of multi-attribute options. The thesis is separated in two studies, and each study focuses on a separate aspect of decision processes. In study one, I investigate whether cognitive models based on an evidence accumulation process provide a better explanation of preferential choices than the descriptive random utility models commonly studied in the applied choice literature, with a specific focus on choices made under time pressure. I show that choices between preferential options and the time taken to make them vary as a function of time pressure. Critically, model-based analyses from the two traditions lead to different psychological conclusions about how people adapt to time pressure. The random utility analyses suggests that time-pressure induced changes to choices are the result of changes in subjective valuations for the features of preferential options. However, cognitive process analyses attribute time-pressure induced changes to choices to differential information accumulation; subjective valuations remain stable across contexts. In study two, I extend a method for exerting fine-grained control over decision time from the experimental psychology literature into the consumer domain. This allows for more targeted time-pressure manipulations,and supports the use of a cognitive process model to assess the time-course of information processing in choices for multi-attribute, consumer-like options. I use external response-signals to interrupt choice processes and analyse data with a novel dynamic choice model to map the time-course of latent utility for those options. This novel approach provides interesting explanations as to when and which attributes in consumer options influence choices. I conclude that decision time and choices are fundamental measures of decision processes in consumer choice and that; (1) failing to account for decision time may lead one to misattribute variability in choices to the incorrect latent cause, which has implications for out-of-sample prediction in the marketplace, and (2) choices under time pressure made with insufficient information and without caution, may not be in one’s best interest.
- Subject
- preference; decision making; random utility; cognitive models; speed-accuracy tradeoff
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1506984
- Identifier
- uon:55943
- Rights
- Copyright 2023 Jon-Paul Cavallaro
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 231 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |