Are choice experiments reliable? Evidence from the lab

Stéphane Luchini (1) , Verity Watson (2)

1 GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille
2 Health Economics Research Unit

This study investigates whether a popular stated preference method, the choice experiment (CE), reliably measures individuals’ values for a good. We address this question using an induced value experiment. Our results indicate that CEs fail to elicit payoff maximizing choices. We find little evidence that increasing the salience of the choices or adding monetary incentives increase the proportion of payoff maximizing choices. This questions the increasing use of CE to value non-market goods for policy making.

Mots clés: demand; revelation

Domaines: Economies et finances; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Stéphane Luchini, Verity Watson. Are choice experiments reliable? Evidence from the lab. Economics Letters, 2014, 124 (1), pp.9--13. ⟨10.1016/j.econlet.2014.04.005⟩. ⟨hal-01463113⟩