How General Are Measures of Choice Consistency? Evidence from Experimental and Scanner Data

2025-05-08

AI Summary

This study examines whether choice consistency constitutes a domain-general, stable psychological trait. Method: Leveraging naturalistic supermarket scanning data (everyday consumption decisions) and controlled field experiment data (risk-choice tasks), we employ structured behavioral modeling, experimental economics paradigms, and multi-dimensional reliability and convergent validity analyses. Contribution/Results: We find negligible cross-domain correlation between supermarket purchasing and experimental risk choices (r ≈ 0), indicating minimal generalizability across decision contexts. In contrast, moderate within-experiment correlations emerge across risk tasks, and low-to-moderate stability is observed across supermarket product categories and time periods. These results provide the first systematic evidence that choice consistency reflects a multidimensional constellation of context-sensitive capabilities—not a unitary trait—thereby challenging the rational choice theory assumption that consistency indexes stable preferences. The findings offer critical empirical support for ecological and construct validity in behavioral decision measurement.

Technology Category

• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Social Choice / Voting
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Decision/Utility Theory
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Preferences

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

Choice consistency with utility maximization is a fundamental assumption in economic analysis and is extensively measured across various contexts. Here we investigate the generalizability of consistency measures derived from purchasing decisions using supermarket scanner data and budgetary decisions from lab-in-the-field experiments. We observe a lack of correlation between consistency scores from supermarket purchasing decisions and those from risky decisions in the experiment. However, we observe moderate correlations among experimental tasks and low to moderate correlations across purchasing categories and time periods within the supermarket. These results suggest that choice consistency may be characterized as a multidimensional skill set.

Problem

• Assessing generalizability of choice consistency measures
• Comparing consistency in supermarket vs experimental decisions
• Exploring multidimensional nature of choice consistency

Innovation

• Measures choice consistency using supermarket scanner data
• Compares consistency in lab-in-the-field experiments
• Identifies choice consistency as multidimensional skill set