Choosing quantities impacts individuals choice, rationality, and willingness to pay estimates

Conventional choice experiments ask respondents to choose their most preferred item, but in reality, consumers select both an item and quantity. Using a split sample design focused on U.S. meat demand, we find that flexibility in consumer quantity choice provides similar choice rationality and consumer segmentation as the conventional restricted quantity framework. Improvements include generating choice frequencies consistent with historical purchase data and willingness-to-pay estimates more comparable to observed retail price data. Additional benefits include the ability to understand consumer preferences for variety and habit formation and generated data that is compatible with traditional demand estimation, all of which are not possible under the conventional restricted quantity framework.

Automated summary

The study found that flexibility in consumer quantity choice provides similar choice rationality and consumer segmentation as the conventional restricted quantity framework, while also improving choice frequencies and willingness-to-pay estimates. Additional benefits include understanding consumer preferences for variety and habit formation, and generating data compatible with traditional demand estimation.