Menu dependence in risky choice
Saini, Ritesh (Creator)
Economic theory assumes that individuals have stable preferences for risky choice options. This research challenges this assumption and demonstrates that preferences for risky options are constructed contingent on which other options constitute the decision maker's choice set, and the context of the decision making situation. This leads to systematic violations of normative choice axioms thereby leading to inefficient choice. Expertise in evaluating risky options may mitigate these effects in certain domains, but may exacerbate choice inefficiency in others. Also, as expected, situational ambiguity and complexity exacerbate these effects. Priming participants into an affective problem-solving mode also enhances menu-dependence. A dual process framework of reasoning is presented to understand these results. Implications of findings on traditional Context-Effects models and Risky Choice models are discussed
Thesis, Dissertation, Undefined, 2008-01-01T08:00:00Z
ScholarlyCommons, 2008-01-01T08:00:00Z