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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Igniting deliberation in high stake decisions: a field study
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Andreas Hefti
  • Peiyao Shen
  • King King Li
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name Working paper series / Department of Economics
Number 378
ISSN 1664-705X
Number of Pages 48
Date 2021
Abstract Text We conduct a large scale randomized field experiment to study whether providing recipients – 42,454 Chinese households in a rural area – with information on the costs of a real decision they make can help to improve the quality of their choices. The decisions are of high financial impact, as the objects of deliberation – air conditioners – have upfront prices exceeding the average monthly salary of a household. Besides providing nominal cost information, we conduct two additional treatments, where we either present the same information by making the real opportunity costs salient, or by administering the information via a quiz. The former aims at facilitating the comparison of effective costs, while the latter aims at enhancing attention and cognitive involvement. We find that providing cost information substantially affects the choices made, and reduces the decision mistakes, in particular in the two additional treatments.
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Keywords Information provision, opportunity costs, decision mistakes, involvement, energy efficiency