Rational Choice Assumptions Research Articles

Technological-Personal-Environmental (TPE) Framework: A Conceptual Model for Technology Acceptance at the Individual Level

INTRODUCTION In the literature, there are several theories and models proposed for technology acceptance. In general, there are two streams of those theories and models; one is with assumption of rational decision and utility maximization and another one is irrational decision due to social pressure and imitation behaviors. Some theories and models integrate elements from both streams. On the other hand, the theories and models can also be classified into the firm level and individual level, which were proposed to examine technology acceptance of organizations and of individuals, respectively. Technological-Organizational-Environmental (TOE) framework is a widely used model for examining technology acceptance at the firm level. This model is comprehensive, consisting factors related to three aspects--technological, organizational, and environmental. Although there are several technology acceptance models and theories for technology acceptance at the individual level, those models are not comprehensive as TOE. However, TOE in nature was designed for technology acceptance at the firm level. Therefore, this paper aims to propose overarching model, which on one hand inherits the comprehensiveness of TOE and on the other hand is adapted for technology acceptance at the individual level. In the following sections, we first review the related theories and models of technology acceptance, followed by the newly proposed model with detailed discussions on the potential variables in the model. Then a discussion is presented. LITERATURE REVIEW Technology Acceptance Theories In the literature, there are several technology acceptance theories. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), posits that behavioral intentions are determined by individual's attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms. TRA has two extensions--Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). TPB, proposed by Ajzen (1991), posits that behavioral intentions are influenced by individual's attitude toward the behavior, the subjective norms, and the individual's perception of behavioral control. TAM is adaptation of TRA in the information systems (IS) field. The model posits that technology acceptance is influenced by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and subjective norm (Davis, 1989). In Roger's (1962) and Moore and Benbasat's (1991) Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), relative advantage, ease of use, and image are postulated to influence individual technology acceptance. Technology Readiness Index (TRI), proposed by Parasuraman (2000), posits that individual's technology acceptance is an interplay between drivers (optimism, innovativeness) and inhibitors (discomfort, insecurity) of technology readiness (p.317). However, only personal factors, rather than any social factors, are considered in this model. All of these models can be categorized as rational choice models, which emphasize self-interest, conscious decision making, and economic optimization. They assume that technology acceptance processes are choice procedures which are systematically conducted and follow a rational path based upon perfect information (Abrahamson, 1991). However, House and Singh (1987) argued that assumptions of rational choice of decision making are frequently violated in practice (p.702), and that of the empirical work on decision making suggests that decisions are made in much less rational ways than specified by rational choice theory (p.707). Furthermore, in the real world it is impossible to obtain perfect information, thus bringing forth uncertainty and jeopardizing the anticipation of the decision consequences. Social Factors Although most of the models discussed heretofore consider various social factors, they are generally fragmented and there is a lack of specific focus on such issue (McCarthy et al. …

The October Crisis Revisited: Counterterrorism as Strategic Choice, Political Result, and Organizational Practice

Counterterrorism is generally understood in terrorism research as the product of rational strategic choice by governments. This is rarely the case, however: Strategic choice is often heavily circumscribed by the effects of crisis, when factors become significant drivers of government action. This paper uses the October Crisis of 1970 to demonstrate how the assumption of rational choice can be very misleading, and argues that scholarly research on counterterrorism needs a more nuanced understanding of how a governments' intent is translated into action.

Extension of the portfolio allocation model to surplus majority governments: a fuzzy approach

Scholars have long studied the conditions under which the cabinet making process will result in minority, surplus majority, or minimum-winning governing coalitions in parliamentary systems. Since Riker, a good number of these attempts have been based on rational choice assumptions. Among formal approaches in this vein, Laver and Shepsle’s (Making and breaking governments: Cabinets and legislatures in parliamentary governments, 1996) portfolio allocation model argues that parties centrally located in policy space have a greater potential for being part of any governing coalition and that parties located at the issue-by-issue median have a high likelihood of forming a minority government. However, the model predicts that surplus majority coalitions will only form when the number of salient policy dimensions in the political system is greater than two. We incorporate fuzzy set theory in the portfolio allocation model, permitting us to model ambiguity in parties’ policy preferences. The reformulated model accounts for the formation of surplus majority coalitions in two-dimensional policy space. We illustrate the model’s conclusions with a case study of the 1996 surplus majority coalition in the Lithuanian Seimas.

What's the problem with teenage parents? And what's the problem with policy?

Public discourse in Britain sees teenage motherhood as a pernicious social problem where mothers, their children and society generally will all suffer. Fathers are seen as feckless. This is reflected in New Labour's teenage pregnancy strategy, which understands teenage parents as victims of ignorance, mis-information, and low expectations. But a review of the research evidence finds that the age at which pregnancy occurs has little effect on social outcomes. Many teenage mothers describe how motherhood makes them feel stronger, and marks a change for the better. Many fathers seek to remain connected with their children. For both, parenting seems to provide an impetus to take up education, training and employment. Teenage parenting may be more of an opportunity than a catastrophe, and often makes sense in the life worlds inhabited by young mothers. The paper ends by asking how we can explain this yawning gulf between the experience of teenage parenting and policy, and concludes that this largely rests on assumptions of rational choice, in turn creating a `rationality mistake'.

Revisiting the Rational Choice and Rationality Debate in the Social Sciences: Is Theory Possible without Rationality?

Not only from outside economics, scathing criticisms of the rational choice and rationality assumptions on which much of the economists' models are based have also come from within economics and have constituted a major source of disagreement among economists. Especially, the Austrian school of economics and philosophy distinguishes itself from mainstream economics on this basis. Various theories such as critical realism, holism, Marxism, historicism, functionalism, semiotics, or the praxeology of the Austrian school, have appeared to be alternatives to rational choice and a heated debate have waged on which should be seen as representing a more realistic paradigm of the study of acting human subjects, interacting with others and their environment. The aversion to rational choice stems from its alleged orientation to subjective rationality, instrumental rationality, mechanistic, logical and mathematical formalism, utility maximization etc. Pushed to extreme, rational choice posits a distorted picture of reality that is both mechanistic and destructive. But the same accusations could well be levied against each of the theories that seek to replace rational choice. This paper takes the radical position that the alleged distinctions between rational choice and its rival theories are more imagined than real. Using a metaphysical hermeneutic deconstruction of the conceptualization of "theoria", this paper shows that the modern theory ("theoria") of knowledge takes as its foundational axiom, the agency of the subjective intellect which presupposes rationality: Rationality is inseparable from theory and both are articulated in the scientific method. We argue that a true alternative to rational choice must therefore, be in effect, an alternative to the scientific method, which as Heideggar pointed out, is itself the "theory of the real". The paper therefore, explores the essentiality of rationality in the modern conceptualization of theory and argues the impossibility of any modern theory to escape from subjective rationality of science insofar as it remains a theory - a theory of the real. So far as the scientific method is not simply a method, but the modern "theory of the real," constructed in the aftermath of Cartesian and Kantian Copernican Revolution, any theory of science, whether relative to the "social" or the "natural," qua theory, is necessarily scientific, methodic and turns on subjective rationality. Therefore, the distinction among competing theories of social science on the basis of rational choice and mathematical formalization have but little validity. We argue in this paper that any distinction worth making in epistemology of science should be between the primeval "theoria" of the pre-Cartesian and pre-Kantian metaphysics of being and the post-Cartesian and post-Kantian epistemology of science.

Rational Choice Epistemology and Belief Formation in Mass Politics

This article begins with a general discussion of the epistemology of rational choice, and argues that there are important questions in political science for which rational choice theory is not a particularly useful epistemic tool. It is further argued that part of the problem lies with the particular vision of methodological individualism that is inherent in the use of classical rational choice assumptions in game theoretic models. An alternative approach that endogenizes the way in which people form beliefs is then advocated as a potential solution to this problem, both as a means to expand the substantive reach of optimizing theories in political science, as well as a way of incorporating more psychological realism into models of political behavior. Two novel models allowing actors within political contexts to form beliefs in endogenous ways are then presented and discussed.

Altruism, accountability, and transparency: cooperative aspirations in contemporary state-level budgeting

Niskanen (1971) established an influential and enduring model of bureaucrats as budget maximizers. Since this theory’s inception, most empirical tests have demonstrated the limited validity of Niskanen’s vision. Using state agency heads as an analytical unit, this paper further develops ways that the rational choice assumptions inadequately characterize bureaucratic budget aspirations: First, instead of being self-interested, many bureaucrats focus on the interests of collectives across governmental and societal actors, and second, an enhanced focus on transparency in presentation of budgetary and programmatic information reduces the information asymmetry that is central to Niskanen’s theory. The findings show that intentions based in a broad public interest and motivations of accountability and transparency tend to reduce, rather than enhance, growth aspirations in state-level bureaucrats.

International Relations Under Risk: Framing State Choice

International Relations Under Risk: Framing State Choice. By Jeffrey D. Berejikian. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 152p. $40.00.This book challenges the rational choice assumptions that undergird much of the extant international relations literature on deterrence, bargaining, cooperation, economic behavior, and the exercise of power. In an ambitious extension of his previous work, Jeffrey D. Berejikian attempts to construct “a new set of theoretical propositions about international politics securely anchored to empirical research in cognitive psychology” (p. 2). In the tradition of Graham T. Allison's (1971) Essence of Decision, Berejikian meticulously demonstrates the degree to which behavioral expectations regarding strategic interaction are tied to underlying conceptual models of decision making. He substitutes prospect theory's empirically grounded observations regarding framing effects and loss aversion for rational choice assumptions regarding invariance and net asset valuation. The result is a comprehensive cognitive model of state interaction that is capable of explaining preference reversals, risk acceptance, and nonmaximizing choice. The boldness of this enterprise more than compensates for minor flaws in execution.

To Trust an Adversary: Integrating Rational and Psychological Models of Collaborative Policymaking

This study explores how trust arises among policy elites engaged in prolonged face-to-face negotiations. Mirroring recent evidence that citizens' procedural preferences (as opposed to policy preferences) drive trust in government, we find thatinterpersonaltrust among stakeholders in consensus-seeking partnerships is explained by the perceived legitimacy and fairness of the negotiation process more so than by the partnership's track record of producing mutually agreeable policies. Overall, hypotheses derived from social psychology do as well or better than those based on rational-choice assumptions. Important predictors of trust include small and stable groups, generalized social trust, clear decision rules, political stalemate, congruence on policy-related beliefs, and absence of devil-shift (the belief that one's opponents wield more power than one's allies). Surprisingly, null or negative correlations exist between trust and network density, measured by membership in voluntary associations. The study illustrates the value of behavioral models that integrate institutional, rational, and psychological explanations.

Saving Customary International Law

The theory of international law has a variety of problems, but none are more glaring than those present in customary international law (CIL). Though CIL is one of the two main sources of international law, it is both poorly understood and under-theorized. Attracted by this weakness, critics have sought to demonstrate that CIL is irrelevant or non-existent. This Article lays a solid theoretical foundation for CIL and responds to critics by showing that CIL can be a meaningful influence on state behavior. Consistent with much of the current writing on international law, including the strongest criticisms in both legal and political science scholarship, the Article makes standard rational choice assumptions about state behavior. It is assumed that states are self-interested and that they will comply with international law only when it is in their interest to do so. It is shown how, under these assumptions CIL can exist and can influence state behavior. What emerges is a robust and coherent theory of CIL. The theory is then used to examine the doctrine of CIL. Where existing views of CIL are consistent with the theory, the Article provides them with a stronger and more satisfying theoretical justification. For example, the theory provides a novel and more persuasive explanation for the persistent objector doctrine. Where existing perspectives are in conflict with the theoretical approach, the Article explains how and why current views should be adapted. For example, the Article argues that opinio juris should be at the center of our understanding of CIL, and that state practice, traditionally considered the second requirement for the establishment of a rule of CIL, should be viewed only as evidence of opinio juris rather than an independent requirement. In addition to the opinio juris and practice requirements, the article examines the most salient doctrinal issues in CIL, including the relationship between treaties and CIL formation, the persistent and subsequent objector doctrines, the role of new states, instant custom, regional or special custom, and the relationship between jus cogens norms and CIL.

Models of the medical consultation: opportunities and limitations of a game theory perspective

The medical consultation is best understood as a two-way social interaction involving interactive decision making. Game theory—a theory based on assumptions of rational choice and focusing on interactive decision making—has the potential to provide models of the consultation that can be used to generate empirically testable predictions about the factors that promote quality of care. Three different game structures—the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, the Assurance game, and the Centipede game—all provide insights into the possible underlying dynamics of the doctor-patient interaction. Further empirical work is needed to uncover the underlying game structures that occur most commonly in medical consultations. Game theory has the potential to provide a new conceptual and theoretical basis for future empirical work on the interaction between doctors and their patients.

Values and Evolutionary Psychology

Scholars suggest that evolutionary psychology may provide a foundation for assumptions regarding human values. I explore this suggestion by developing two arguments regarding the permissiveness of norms regulating male and female sexual activity. The first relies on the standard rational choice assumption that people value resources, and the second relies on an assumption suggested by evolutionary psychology that actors value seeing their children successfully reach adulthood. These two assumptions produce contrasting predictions regarding sex norms. I describe the implications of these predictions for explaining cross-cultural variation and present evidence that supports the evolutionary psychology-based predictions in this context. I also suggest implications of the two approaches for explaining norms cross-nationally and within the United States. The article provides support for the utility of evolutionary psychology in developing assumptions about values.

Redefining Rational Choice in Environmental Affairs

Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design. By Huib Pellikaan, Robert J. van der Veen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 247 pp., $65.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-62156-9), $23.00 paper (ISBN: 0-521-62764-8). In Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design , Huib Pellikaan and Robert van der Veen present an empirical study of environmental attitudes in the Netherlands. They use the results of this study to assess the Dutch government's attempts to foster “self-regulation policy” for certain environmental issues. Pellikaan and van der Veen rely heavily on rational choice theory in their methodology, and the language throughout the book is rather technical. Therefore, the book will be most useful to specialists in rational choice theory or to scholars interested in analyzing collective action problems through the lens of rational choice. Environmental Dilemmas and Policy Design is structured in three parts. The first section provides background to collective action theory and Dutch self-regulation policies. The second section provides a detailed description of the authors' survey of environmental attitudes in the Netherlands. The third section attempts to assess self-regulation policies and asks larger theoretical questions related to moral commitment and collective action problems. Although the book as a whole is too technical and the language too inaccessible for most general classroom use, the study does make an important contribution to the evolving literature that critiques traditional assumptions of rational choice and collective action theory. (For an introduction to rational choice theory, see Arrow 1963 and Riker 1990. For an introduction to critiques of rational choice, see Sen 1997.) Most of the literature on rational choice theory and collective action assumes that rational individuals will value effectiveness and efficiency above all. …

Infectious Diseases, Public Policy, and the Marriage of Economics and Epidemiology

The assumption of rational choice helps in understanding how people respond to infectious diseases. People maximize their well- being by choosing levels of prevention and therapy subject to the constraints faced. Objectives and constraints are numerous, necessitating tradeoffs. For example, this approach predicts how people respond to changes in the risk of infection and to the availability of diagnostic tests. The combination of individual rationality with epidemiological models of infection dynamics predicts whether individual choices about infectious disease prevention and therapies produce the best possible social outcomes. If not, individuals’ choices generate rationales for government interventions to influence the levels of preventive and therapeutic activities. Optimal policy usually means accepting endemic infection, but at a level lowered by a coordinated package of interventions. Economics combined with epidemiology provides much qualitative guidance on the design of such packages, including immunization programs.

Rational Choice in Medicaid Managed Care: A Critique

ABSTRACT Market-based health care policies cast patients as active decision-making consumers who are able to choose among health plans and select the highest quality and lowest priced providers. Embodied in the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPS), a national policy initiative based on assumptions of rational choice, such a model has recently been extended to low income populations enrolled in the U.S. Medicaid program. This paper describes and seeks to investigate the efficacy of this policy initiative by examining three questions: (1) Are Medicaid recipients willing to take an active stance in selecting health plans? (2) Do they see the varying health plans as offering genuine choice? and (3) Does the ability to choose one's own health plan help address some of the long-standing obstacles to quality care for the poor? Analyses of these questions are informed by a review of existing knowledge about the life circumstances and health needs of low income populations (particularly low income women), and by original data from Kansas Medicaid recipients, gathered in conjunction with a state-wide version of the CAHPS. We find significant discrepancies between the assumptions of this model and the realities of low income women's lives. We conclude that the current consumer model of health care reflects class-biased assumptions about rational choice that negate the daily experiences of the poor, offers little in the way of real choice, and fails to address long-standing health needs of low income populations. Market incentives and consumerism will be effective only when the social context of poverty is taken into account and addressed by health care initiatives.

Moral and Legal Rhetoric in International Relations: A Rational Choice Perspective

Abstract Critics of realist and rational choice approaches to international law argue that if nations were motivated entirely by power or self‐interest, their leaders would not make moral and legal arguments because no one would believe them. Thus, the prevalence of moral and legal rhetoric on the international stage refutes the behavioral assumptions of realism and rational choice. This paper argues that even if nations are not motivated by a desire to comply with morality or law, the use of moral and legal arguments could occur in equilibrium. Signaling and cheap‐talk models show that nations may engage in talk in order (1) to deflect suspicion that they have unstable political systems or adversarial interests and (2) to coordinate when gains from coordination are available. International talk is often moral and legal because the obligational vocabulary of moral and legal dispute between individuals is also useful for purely amoral strategic interactions when cooperation and coordination are involved.

Revolution or Contribution? Rational Choice Approaches in the Study of Latin American Politics

AbstractThis article assesses the contributions of studies in the rational choice (RC) tradition to scholarly understanding of Latin American politics. It groups some representative works according to their use of RC assumptions, and also reviews some of the major works in the institutionalist tradition. It argues that works in the RC tradition have neither forced a major rethinking of established theories nor filled major lacunae, although they have illuminated some phenomena that were only partly understood. The RC approach works best for narrow questions in which power relations and structural constraints are stable, whereas its essential assumptions become untenable in questions that involve shifting power relations among social groups and the state over time.

Expectations and Aspirations in Dilemma Interactions

Incentive compatibility solutions to social dilemmas change individual consequences of non-co-operative and co-operative acts such that self-maximizers will rationally choose to act in ways that promote the public good, i.e. to co-operate. The traditional selfish egoism assumption of rational choice requires dilemmas to be solved by either adding some likely punishment to defection or reward to co-operation. Dilemma co-operation can also, of course, be explained by relaxing the narrow self-interest assumption. By allowing for the possibility that outcomes of interdependent interactions are subjectively evaluated by reference to the actor's own as well as others' interests, or that people get additional utility (or avoid disutility) by following certain normative codes, co-operation in finitely repeated dilemmas can be rational.For examples of evidence of subjective transformations of given payoff matrices, see James Andreoni, ‘Giving with Impure Altrusim: Applications to Charity and Recardian Equivalence’, Journal of Political Economy, 97 (1989), 447–51; and Michael D. Kuhlman and Alfred F. J. Marshello, ‘Individual Differences in Game Motivation as Moderators of Preprogrammed Strategic Effects in Prisoner's Dilemma’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32 (1975), 922–31.

Hardin Revisited: A Critical Look at Perception and the Logic of the Commons

With perhaps controversial implications for theory and practice, this paper suggests that the validity of Hardinian theories of the commons are dependent on the implicit rational choice assumption that resource users are aware of resource degradation. Without an awareness of the collective costs of resource use, there can be no dilemma between pursuing individual benefits and avoiding collective ruin. In such situations, the dilemma of the commons cannot be validly said to be the cause of resource depletion, and many traditional policy options to address common resource depletion may not be effective. Two reasons for the lack of awareness about resource degradation are (1) fatalistic beliefs that humans cannot harm a resource base, and (2) the growing complexity and abstraction of modern environmental problems that have obscured the collective costs of resource use from our individual and societal awareness.

Moral and Legal Rhetoric in International Relations: A Rational Choice Perspective

Critics of realist and rational choice approaches to international law argue that if nations were motivated entirely by power or self-interest, their leaders would not make moral and legal arguments because no one would believe them. Thus, the prevalence of moral and legal rhetoric on the international stage refutes the behavioral assumptions of realism and rational choice. This paper argues that even if nations are not motivated by a desire to comply with morality or law, the use of moral and legal arguments could occur in equilibrium. Signaling and cheap talk models show that nations may engage in talk in order (1) to deflect suspicion that they have unstable political systems or adversarial interests, and (2) to coordinate when gains from coordination are available. International talk is often moral and legal because the obligational vocabulary of moral and legal dispute between individuals is also useful for purely amoral strategic interactions when cooperation and coordination are involved. The existence of moral and legal rhetoric in international relations is the result of strategic incentives, not of the desire to comply with morality or law.