Unraveling semi-compensatory choice: data collection based on two-stage decision protocols

The present study proposes a two-stage procedure to collect data about semi-compensatory choice processes in a digital economy environment. At the first stage, individuals form their viable choice set by specifying a set of tolerated criteria thresholds. At the second stage, individuals choose their most preferred alternative. The digital economy environment allows seamless tracking of the two-stage choice protocols without interfering with the natural choice process and without introducing problems related to comprehension bias, narrative inconsistency and misinterpretation of the choice protocols. The procedure is accompanied by a questionnaire collecting personal information that can be associated to threshold selection. The procedure is applied to off campus apartment rental choices by students in order to demonstrate its capability to retrieve tolerated criteria thresholds and choice outcomes from cross-sectional data in a choice situation entailing many alternatives and multiple criteria. Results show the importance of elimination-based choice set formation, the distribution of threshold selection across the population, the characteristics of the considered choice sets, and the linkage between the choice set formation and the choice.
Keyword: Two-stage elicitation, thresholds, direct elicitation, decision protocols