infonet-economy

This work provides a deeper understanding of how overweight stigma operates in a collective context. I investigate a French online community of overweight women. First, I identify the elements that contribute to experiencing the stigma of overweight and how they interact with consumption. Then, I look at the role of the community for consumers that have distanced themselves from the…

Consumers’ purchase decisions depend on whether a product is perceived as a bargain or as overpriced. But how do consumers evaluate sales prices? The standard approach in economics, psychology, and marketing suggests that consumers’ estimates are best described by a attribute-based or piecemeal strategy that integrates information about products in a linear additive fashion. Here, we…

In management research, empirical data are often analyzed using p-value null hypothesis significance testing (pNHST). Here we outline the conceptual and practical advantages of an alternative analysis method: Bayesian hypothesis testing and model selection using the Bayes factor. In contrast to pNHST, Bayes factors allow researchers to quantify evidence in favor of the null…

Many cognitive theories of judgement and decision making assume that choice options are evaluated relative to other available options. The extent to which the preference for one option is influenced by other available options will often depend on how similar the options are to each other, where similarity is assumed to be a decreasing function of the distance between options. We…

Cognitive models of decision making aim to explain the process underlying observed choices. Here, we test a sequential sampling model of decision making, multialternative decision field theory (MDFT; Roe, Busemeyer, & Townsend, 2001), on empirical grounds and compare it against 2 established random utility models of choice: the probit and the logit model. Using a within-subject…

The heritability of variety seeking in the food domain was estimated from a large sample (N = 5,543) of middle age to elderly monozygotic and dizygotic twins from the “Virginia 30,000” twin study. Different dietary variety scores were calculated based on a semi-quantitative food choice questionnaire that assessed consumption frequencies and quantities for a list of 99 common foods.…

Affective states can change how people react to measures aimed at influencing their decisions such as providing a default option. Previous research has shown that when defaults maintain the status quo positive mood increases reliance on the default and negative mood decreases it. Similarly, it has been demonstrated that positive mood enhances the preference for inaction. We extend…

In ant algorithms, each individual ant makes decisions according to the greedy force (short term profit) and the trail system based on the history of the search (information provided by other ants). Usually, each ant is a constructive process, which starts from scratch and builds step by step a complete solution of the considered problem. In contrast, in Ant Local Search (ALS), each…