Limited Attention and Procedural Decision Making

该奖项资助开发一种具有有限注意力的决策新数学模型的工作。目标是在决策理论研究和有限理性研究之间建立一个新的联系。最终的结果是分析、预测和理解个人如何做出决定的新方法。心理学、金融学、市场营销和其他领域的大量研究表明，人们在做选择时注意力有限。也就是说，大多数人不是考虑所有可能的选项，而是先比较，然后从一组更有限的选项中做出选择，这组选项被称为考虑集。该项目旨在回答三大类研究问题。首先，社会科学家如何从只记录人们所做的选择，而不是考虑的具体选择的数据中推断出偏好和考虑集？其次，在这种注意力有限的情况下，决策者以标准经济模型无法解释的方式行事的具体方式是什么？第三，人们如何决定要考虑哪些选项？他们是如何形成他们的考虑集的？市场活动或公共政策等外部因素对这些考虑集有什么影响？通过使用微观经济学理论的方法和工具来回答大型跨学科研究界感兴趣的问题，他们的研究将产生更广泛的影响。此外，这项研究有可能引导公共政策转向新型的“轻推”干预，这可能能够保证个人考虑正确的一组选择，一组不会武断地排除优秀选择的选择。

This award funds work to develop a new mathematical model of decision making with limited attention. The goal is to build a new link between research on decision theory and research on bounded rationality. The end result is new ways to analyze, predict, and understand how individuals make decisions. Numerous studies in psychology, finance, marketing, and other areas have demonstrated that people have limited attention for making choices. That is, rather than considering all possible options most people first compare and then choose from a much more limited set of options called a consideration set.The project is designed to answer three broad kinds of research questions. First, how can social scientists infer preferences and consideration sets from datat that only records the choices people made, not the specific options considered? Second, what are the specific ways in which decision makers with this kind of limited attention behave in ways that cannot be explained by standard economic models? Third, how do people decide what options to consider? How do they form their consideration sets and what effect do outside factors like marketing campaigns or public policy have on these consideration sets?Theis research will have broader impact by using methods and tools from microeconomic theory to answer questions of interest to a large and interdisciplinary research community. In addition, the research has the potential to guide public policy to new kinds of "nudge" interventions that might be able to guarantee that individuals consider the right set of options, a set that does not arbitrarily exclude excellent choices.