Context Effects on Effort and Accuracy in Choice: An Enquiry into Adaptive Decision Making

Abstract

Previous research suggests that context variables may have strong effects on choice accuracy, but little is known about consumers' awareness of context or strategic response to changes in choice context. In this study, increasing the number of dominated alternatives significantly improved choice accuracy and reduced choice effort. Unobtrusive measures show that decision makers simplified the choice sets less when there were more dominated alternatives. The findings support the importance of context; several relationships between choice process and outcomes were context specific. Decision makers may rely on relatively simple forms of feedback about the choice context as they go through the choice process, rather than systematically assessing it prior to strategy selection.