Abstract
The main objective of this study is to examine how repeated choice affects preference learning in stated preference experiments. We test different hypotheses related to preference learning by analyzing response patterns and asking respondents in a choice experiment to report their experienced certainty when going through the choice tasks. In a split-sample test, we show that follow-up choice certainty questions are procedural invariant. The self-reported certainty results indicate that learning occurs, but econometric testing procedures do not identify any significant impact of learning effects on parameter estimates or variance across choice tasks. Additional tests of choice consistency suggest that preferences in the choice experiment are stable and coherent.
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Acknowledgments
This study was carried out as part of the European Directorate-General Research funded project AquaMoney (SSPI-022723) (www.aquamoney.org). Funding support from CQ University and the Australian Environmental Economics Research Hub is gratefully acknowledged.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Brouwer, R., Dekker, T., Rolfe, J. et al. Choice Certainty and Consistency in Repeated Choice Experiments. Environ Resource Econ 46, 93–109 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-009-9337-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-009-9337-x