1,721,070 research outputs found
Choice Architecture: A Message and Environment Perspective
Full text linkContrary to standard theories of decision making, which posit that preferences are invariant across logically equivalent choice scenarios, experimental evidence shows that even theoretically irrelevant aspects of a decisional context can affect choices (for an overview, see Shafir 2013, especially Part 8). For instance, food choice may be affected by the prominence or order of items on display, whereby those that are more prominently displayed may draw the consumer’s attention and be selected in response (e.g., Dayan and Bar-Hillel 2011). The idea that supposedly irrelevant features of the choice context matter for the final decision is encapsulated in the concept of ‘choice architecture’, that is, the way in which a choice situation is ‘designed’ and presented to the decision maker (Thaler and Sunstein 2009; Thaler, Sunstein, and Balz 2013). More specifically, a choice architecture includes not only the options available and the budget constraint, but also the options’ order and prominence, the way in which they are described to the decision maker (e.g., if information is framed in positive or negative terms), the presence of default options, the rules or norms that govern the decision, and so on. Given the plethora of aspects that form a choice architecture (and that can affect the final decision), decision theorists and policy makers have strived to advance models and frameworks to analyze and design choice architectures (e.g., Johnson et al. 2012; Thaler, Sunstein, and Balz 2013; Lades and Delaney 2022)
Framing Effects in the Elicitation of Risk Aversion: An Experimental Study
Full text linkIn most risk elicitation tasks, lotteries are presented through a verbal description stating the outcomes and their likelihoods (e.g., "Win 5"), sometimes accompanied by a pictorial representation (a pie chart or bar graph). Literature on risk communication suggests that alternative but supposedly equivalent numeric formats (e.g., percentages vs ratios) and pictorial displays (e.g., continuous vs discrete) may lead to a different perception of risk and concern for it. The present experiment (N = 95) tests for numeric and pictorial framing effects in a multiple price list (MPL), where risk information is presented either as percentages ("10%") or as ratios ("1 out of 10") and is accompanied by either two-slice or ten-slice pies. Results show that neither the numeric framing (adopting ratios) nor the pictorial framing (slicing pies) significantly altered per se the average elicited risk aversion. Nonetheless, the pictorial framing significantly reduced the elicited risk aversion for those participants who focused on the probability of the lottery's high outcome in their decisions
Isolation of microsatellite loci from the endemic and endangered Adriatic sturgeon (Acipenser naccarii)
No full textWith the aim of elaborating a breeding plan on a captive stock of the highly endangered Adriatic sturgeon (Acipenser naccarii), a total of 10 polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated from an enriched library. The results of cross amplification of additional 8 loci previously isolated from A. oxyrinchus, A. fulvescens and Scaphyrinchus platorhynchus are also reported. Given the tetraploid condition of the species the genetic variability was estimated basing on the number of alleles per individuals and the average band sharing
- …
