nep-dcm New Economics Papers
on Discrete Choice Models
Issue of 2023‒07‒24
twenty papers chosen by
Edoardo Marcucci
Università degli studi Roma Tre
  1. What is in a label? Examining the influence of cultural and colonial heritage on preferences and willingness to pay for local and international rice labels in Senegal By Britwum, Kofi; Demont, Matty
  2. Semiparametric Discrete Choice Models for Bundles By Fu Ouyang; Thomas T. Yang
  3. Is the willingness to pay for digital agricultural solutions reasonable for companies as well? : Using the Contingent valuation methods By Kim, Miseok; Yoo, Do-il
  4. Replication Report: Concentration Bias in Intertemporal Choice By Deer, Lachlan; Ellingsrud, Sigmund; Kordt, Amund H.; Heuer, Felix
  5. I'll Try That, Too By Sebastian Oetzel; Mareike Sachse; Daniel Klapper
  6. Does the choice of eligibility metric influence the relationship between SNAP and food insecurity? By Wei, Min-Fang; Gundersen, Craig G.
  7. Building latent segments of goods to improve shipment size modeling: Confirmatory evidence from France By Raphael Piendl; Martin Koning; François Combes; Gernot Liedtke
  8. Strategic Incentives and the Optimal Sale of Information By Rosina Rodríguez Olivera
  9. Impacts of People’s Risk Preference on Their Willingness to Adopt New Post-Harvest Storage Technology By Jia, Jingru; McNamara, Paul E.
  10. Factors affecting farmers’ willingness to accept for carbon farming in the U.S. Midwest By Wang, Tong; Jin, Hailong; Clay, David E.
  11. Testing for Manipulation: Experimental Evidence on Dark Patterns By Bogliacino, Francesco; Leonardo, Pejsachowicz; Liva, Giovanni; Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francisco
  12. Transparent app design reduces excessive usage time and increases willingness to pay compared to common behavioral design - A framed field experiment By Timko, Christina; Adena, Maja
  13. Impacts of Variety-Seeking, Substitution, and Demographics on Demand for Plant-Based Meat Alternatives By Neuhofer, Zachary T.; Lusk, Jayson L.
  14. Irrigation choice through water supply augmentation in the presence of climate risk and uncertainty By Kovacs, Kent; Tran, Dat Q.
  15. How much are producers willing to pay for ecosystem services that promote soil health? By Essakkat, Kaouter; Schoengold, Karina
  16. Germany's nationwide travel experiment in 2022: public transport for 9 Euro per month -- First findings of an empirical study By Allister Loder; Fabienne Cantner; Lennart Adenaw; Nico Nachtigall; David Ziegler; Felix Gotzler; Markus B. Siewert; Stefan Wurster; Sebastian Goerg; Markus Lienkamp; Klaus Bogenberger
  17. Examining Incentives for Landowners to use Preventative Measures Against Wildfires Through an Experimental Game By Collison, Kealey N.; Grogan, Kelly A.
  18. Key predictors for climate policy support and political mobilization: The role of beliefs and preferences By Simon Montfort
  19. Simple estimation of semiparametric models with measurement errors By Andrei Zeleneev; Kirill Evdokimov
  20. Post-pandemic trends in urban mobility By Panayotis Christidis; Maria Vega Gonzalo; Giulia Ulpiani; Nadja Vetters
  1. By: Britwum, Kofi; Demont, Matty
    Keywords: Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Marketing, Institutional and Behavioral Economics
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335501&r=dcm
  2. By: Fu Ouyang; Thomas T. Yang
    Abstract: We propose methods of estimation and inference for use in semiparametric discrete choice models for bundles in both cross-sectional and panel data settings. Our matching-based identification approach permits certain forms of heteroskedasticity and arbitrary correlation in the disturbances across choices. For the cross-sectional model, we propose a kernel-weighted rank procedure and show the validity of the nonparametric bootstrap for the inference. For the panel data model, we propose localized maximum score estimators and show that the numerical bootstrap is a valid inference method. Monte Carlo experiments demonstrate that our proposed estimation and inference procedures perform adequately in finite samples.
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.04135&r=dcm
  3. By: Kim, Miseok; Yoo, Do-il
    Keywords: Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Research Methods/Statistical Methods
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335692&r=dcm
  4. By: Deer, Lachlan; Ellingsrud, Sigmund; Kordt, Amund H.; Heuer, Felix
    Abstract: Dertwinkel-Kalt et al. (2022) examine the effect of concentration bias - the tendency to overweight advantages that are concentrated in time relative to costs that are spread over multiple time periods - on intertemporal choice in a laboratory experiment. In their preferred empirical specification, the authors report that concentration bias leads to a 22.4% higher willingness to work than explained by a standard model of intertemporal discounting. We conduct a computational replication of the main results of the paper using the same procedures and original data. Our results confirm the sign, magnitude and statistical significance of the author’s reported estimates across each of their five main findings.
    Keywords: concentration bias, intertemporal choice, laboratory experiment, computational replication
    JEL: D01 D9
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:42&r=dcm
  5. By: Sebastian Oetzel (University of Applied Sciences Fulda); Mareike Sachse (HU Berlin); Daniel Klapper (HU Berlin)
    Abstract: The effect of variety on consumer choice has been studied extensively, with some stream of literature showing the positive effects on choice and others arguing that too many alternatives may result in negative consequences (i.e., choice deferral or no purchase at all), often referred to as choice overload. In a field experiment with a major chocolate brand conducted at a German retail chain, we test for variety during a price and display promotion. Participating stores either include the full variety of products on the display or a reduced selection (low variety). Contrary to the literature on choice overload, we find a significantly positive effect of the display promotion on unit sales, which is stronger for stores with high variety. Further findings show a stronger promotion uplift for less popular products in stores with high variety on the display. This suggests that more variety may increase consumers’ willingness to try new products, when the financial risk is low. We also test for the effect of product distribution on displays by analysing the number of facings. Additionally, we introduce an approach to determine an optimal space allocation of products on the display. Our findings suggest that an even distribution results in the highest profits for the retailer. We contribute to the literature on variety for consumer choices by offering insights from actual purchases with store-level scanner data of display promotions.
    Keywords: variety; retailing; in-store display; field experiment;
    JEL: M31 C23 C93 D12
    Date: 2023–06–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:404&r=dcm
  6. By: Wei, Min-Fang; Gundersen, Craig G.
    Keywords: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335873&r=dcm
  7. By: Raphael Piendl (DLR - German Aerospace Center); Martin Koning (AME-SPLOTT - Systèmes Productifs, Logistique, Organisation des Transports et Travail - Université Gustave Eiffel); François Combes (AME-SPLOTT - Systèmes Productifs, Logistique, Organisation des Transports et Travail - Université Gustave Eiffel); Gernot Liedtke (DLR - German Aerospace Center)
    Abstract: Freight transport demand models are generally based on administrative commodity type segmentation which are usually not tailored to behavioral freight transport demand modelling. Recent literature has explored new approaches to segment freight transport demand, notably based on latent class analysis, with promising results. In particular, empirical evidence from road freight transport modelling in Germany hints at the importance of conditioning and handling constraints as a sound basis for segmentation. However, this literature is currently sparse and based on small samples. Before it can be accepted that conditioning should be integrated in the state-of-the-art doctrine of freight data collection and model specification, more evidence is required. The objective of this article is to contribute to the issue. Using detailed data on shipments transported in France, a model of choice of shipment size with latent classes is estimated. The choice of shipment size is modelled as a process of total logistic cost minimization. Latent class analysis leverages the wide range of variables available in the dataset, to provide five categories of shipments which are both contrasted, internally homogenous, and directly usable to update freight collection protocols. The groups are: "standard temperature-controlled food products"', "special transports"', "bulk cargo"', "miscellaneous standard cargo in bags"', "palletised standard cargo"'. This segmentation is highly consistent with the empirical evidence from Germany and also leads to better estimates of shipment size choices than administrative segmentation. As a conclusion, the finding that conditioning and handling information is essential to understanding and modelling freight transport can be regarded as more robust.
    Keywords: FREIGHT TRANSPORT, SHIPMENT SIZE CHOICE, TOTAL LOGISTICS COST, SEGMENTATION UNIVERSALITY, TRANSPORT DE MARCHANDISE
    Date: 2022–01–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04117547&r=dcm
  8. By: Rosina Rodríguez Olivera
    Abstract: I consider a model in which a monopolist data-seller owners information to privately informed data-buyers who play a game of incomplete information. I characterize the data-seller's optimal menu, which screens between two types of data-buyers. Data-buyers' preferences for information cannot generally be ordered across types. I show that the nature of data-buyers' preferences for information allows the data-seller to extract all surplus. In particular, the data-seller owners a perfectly informative experiment to the data-buyer with highest willingness to pay and a partially informative experiment, which makes the data-buyer with the highest willingness to pay for perfect information indifferent between both experiments. I also show that the features of the optimal menu are determined by the interaction between data-buyers' strategic incentives and the correlation of their private information. Namely, the data-seller owners two informative experiments even when data-buyers would choose the same action without supplemental information if data-buyers: i) have coordination incentives and their private information is negatively correlated or ii) have anti-coordination incentives and their private information is positively correlated.
    Keywords: Screening, Information, Strategic incentives
    JEL: D80 D82
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2023_437&r=dcm
  9. By: Jia, Jingru; McNamara, Paul E.
    Keywords: International Development, Research Methods/Statistical Methods, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335472&r=dcm
  10. By: Wang, Tong; Jin, Hailong; Clay, David E.
    Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy, Production Economics, Environmental Economics and Policy
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335876&r=dcm
  11. By: Bogliacino, Francesco (Universidad Nacional de Colombia); Leonardo, Pejsachowicz; Liva, Giovanni; Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francisco
    Abstract: Several countries and supranational authorities are debating whether to regulate or ban dark patterns, deceptive users’ interfaces. A key empirical component to this debate is how to assess manipulation. In this study, we develop a transaction test which measure to what extent the dark patterns lead to decisions inconsistent with elicited preferences. We conducted a large preregistered online study (N=7430) with a representative population of six countries to identify both the effect of dark patterns on consumers’ choice consistency and the potential counteracting effects of protective measures. Our treatments include three dark patterns - hiding information on the product, toying-with-emotions, and the use of psychological profiling to personalize the display for the consumer – and two versions of a protective measure that discloses information and requires subject to confirm the selection. Participants are assigned to either a motivated delay or incentive compatible time pressure environment, allowing to identify the impact of treatments on consumers paying enough attention and on situationally vulnerable consumer. Dark patterns do manipulate consumers, showing remarkable effects on both average and vulnerable consumers. The cool down intervention has a null effect. We stress test the transaction test in a controlled experiment, where the preference elicitation is incentive compatible, we collect repeated measurement of choices among lotteries and we manipulate the extent of the mistake. In this additional experiment, the TWE treatment resulted in greater inconsistency compared to the control group, particularly in lotteries where the point of indifference was less likely to be located at the boundaries of the MPL grid. While subjects learned to be consistent through multiple rounds of choice and with decision problems further from their area of indifference, the learning effect is less pronounced under the TWE treatment.
    Date: 2023–06–29
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sqt3j&r=dcm
  12. By: Timko, Christina; Adena, Maja
    Abstract: Smartphone app designers often use behavioral design to influence users, increase sales, and boost advertising revenue. Behavioral design relies on elements ranging from app appearance to black-box algorithms and personalization. It commonly exploits behavioral biases, such as the lack of self-control. Consumers are seldom aware of such design and usually have no control over it. Aiming to protect consumers, the recently enacted European Digital Services Act requires app design to be more transparent and adjustable. In a framed field experiment, we document that behavioral design increases app usage time, especially in the case of vulnerable users. An app version that adds transparency and offers protection features helps to overcome temptation. The higher willingness to pay for the transparent version shows that the positive effects of app transparency and increased consumer protection might not only materialize on the demand side but may also challenge current practices on the supply side.
    Keywords: smartphone app, filtering algorithm, transparency, consumer protection, field experiment
    JEL: C93 O33 D83 L86 M38 D18
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbeoc:spii2023302&r=dcm
  13. By: Neuhofer, Zachary T.; Lusk, Jayson L.
    Keywords: Marketing, Agribusiness, Institutional and Behavioral Economics
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335456&r=dcm
  14. By: Kovacs, Kent; Tran, Dat Q.
    Keywords: Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Production Economics, Risk and Uncertainty
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335432&r=dcm
  15. By: Essakkat, Kaouter; Schoengold, Karina
    Keywords: Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Agricultural and Food Policy
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335567&r=dcm
  16. By: Allister Loder; Fabienne Cantner; Lennart Adenaw; Nico Nachtigall; David Ziegler; Felix Gotzler; Markus B. Siewert; Stefan Wurster; Sebastian Goerg; Markus Lienkamp; Klaus Bogenberger
    Abstract: In spring 2022, the German federal government agreed on a set of policy measures that aimed at reducing households' financial burden resulting from a recent price increase, especially in energy and mobility. These included among others, a nationwide public transport ticket for 9~Euro per month for three months in June, July, and August 2022. In transport policy research this is an almost unprecedented behavioral experiment. It allows us to study not only behavioral responses in mode choice and induced demand but also to assess the effectiveness of these instruments. We observe this natural experiment with a three-wave survey and a smartphone-based travel diary with passive tracking on an initial sample of 2, 261 participants with a focus on the Munich metropolitan region. This area is chosen as it offers a variety of mode options with a dense and far-reaching public transport network that even provides good access to many leisure destinations. The app has been providing data from 756 participants until the end of September, the three-wave survey by 1, 402, and the app and the three waves by 637 participants. In this paper, we report on the study design, the recruitment and study participation as well as the impacts of the policy measures on the self-reported and app-observed travel behavior; we present results on consumer choices for a successor ticket to the 9-Euro-Ticket that started in May 2023. We find a substantial shift in the modal share towards public transport from the car in our sample during the 9-Euro-Ticket period in travel distance (around 5 %) and in trip frequency (around 7 %). The mobility outcomes of the 9-Euro-Ticket however provide evidence that cheap public transport as a policy instrument does not suffice to incentive sustainable travel behavior choices and that other policy instruments are required in addition.
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.08297&r=dcm
  17. By: Collison, Kealey N.; Grogan, Kelly A.
    Keywords: Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/Statistical Methods
    Date: 2023
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea22:335805&r=dcm
  18. By: Simon Montfort
    Abstract: Public support and political mobilization are two crucial factors for the adoption of ambitious climate policies in line with the international greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Paris Agreement. Despite their compound importance, they are mainly studied separately. Using a random forest machine-learning model, this article investigates the relative predictive power of key established explanations for public support and mobilization for climate policies. Predictive models may shape future research priorities and contribute to theoretical advancement by showing which predictors are the most and least important. The analysis is based on a pre-election conjoint survey experiment on the Swiss CO2 Act in 2021. Results indicate that beliefs (such as the perceived effectiveness of policies) and policy design preferences (such as for subsidies or tax-related policies) are the most important predictors while other established explanations, such as socio-demographics, issue salience (the relative importance of issues) or political variables (such as the party affiliation) have relatively weak predictive power. Thus, beliefs are an essential factor to consider in addition to explanations that emphasize issue salience and preferences driven by voters' cost-benefit considerations.
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2306.10144&r=dcm
  19. By: Andrei Zeleneev; Kirill Evdokimov
    Abstract: We develop a practical way of addressing the Errors-In-Variables (EIV) problem in the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) framework. We focus on the settings in which the variability of the EIV is a fraction of that of the mismeasured variables, which is typical for empirical applications. For any initial set of moment conditions our approach provides a "corrected" set of moment conditions that are robust to the EIV. We show that the GMM estimator based on these moments is √n-consistent, with the standard tests and confidence intervals providing valid inference. This is true even when the EIV are so large that naïve estimators (that ignore the EIV problem) may be heavily biased with the confidence intervals having 0% coverage. Our approach involves no nonparametric estimation, which is particularly important for applications with multiple covariates, and settings with multivariate, serially correlated, or non-classical EIV.
    Date: 2023–06–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:azt:cemmap:10/23&r=dcm
  20. By: Panayotis Christidis (European Commission - JRC); Maria Vega Gonzalo (European Commission - JRC); Giulia Ulpiani (European Commission - JRC); Nadja Vetters (European Commission - JRC)
    Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic triggered significant changes in lifestyles and mobility patterns which are still evident at the end of 2022 and may still raise challenges for transport policy in the short to medium term. While changes in lifestyles - mainly as regards work patterns - have decreased total urban transport activity, the gradual return to pre-pandemic levels suggests that traffic and congestion levels may soon exceed their 2019 levels. Apart from the question of total transport activity, the trends identified in this report can influence modal choice and trip distances, with possible negative repercussions in terms of transport costs, congestion and emissions. The analysis combines a range of data sources and methodologies. Changes in mobility patterns are identified using the JRC Travel Survey 2021. The evolution of traffic congestion levels is monitored through daily TomTom data from 178 cities in the EU. The evolution of public transport activity is measured with up-to-date statistics from national and local sources. The role of active mobility is discussed using a model to estimate the potential uptake and benefits in terms of external costs. Information provided by the candidates for the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities allows an extensive review of transport policy measures adopted at city level. Finally, a case study for 40 European cities using multiple data sources provides an empirical confirmation of the main findings.
    Keywords: mobility, congestion, public transport, emerging technologies, Covid-19
    JEL: R41 L90 L91 O18 R14
    Date: 2023–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc133322&r=dcm
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