Presenta: Omar Pérez, DII UCHILE
Abstract: Repeated choices are often modeled as repeated expressions of stable preferences. Psychology, however, suggests that repetition in stable contexts can gradually shift behavior toward habit: control moves away from current information and toward previously reinforced or previously selected responses. This talk brings these ideas together using eye-tracking and structural choice modeling.
Participants made 150 repeated consumer choices without outcome feedback while their eye movements were recorded. The attribute layout remained stable for 100 trials and was then spatially disrupted. During the stable phase, attention progressively narrowed: participants searched less, relied more on learned attribute locations, checked labels less often, and responded faster. A structural choice model showed that willingness-to-pay ratios remained stable, but the influence of current attributes weakened while previous-choice inertia increased.
The key result is therefore not preference change, but a change in who controls choice: stable valuations increasingly lost control to a response tendency. When the spatial layout was disrupted, attention broadened and inertia fell immediately, while estimated preferences remained unchanged.
These findings connect consumer choice, habit psychology, and econometric modeling. They show that repeated choices can look preference-consistent at the surface while concealing a shift from active valuation to habitual control. Attention is the mechanism that makes this shift possible.
The key result is therefore not preference change, but a change in who controls choice: stable valuations increasingly lost control to a response tendency. When the spatial layout was disrupted, attention broadened and inertia fell immediately, while estimated preferences remained unchanged.
These findings connect consumer choice, habit psychology, and econometric modeling. They show that repeated choices can look preference-consistent at the surface while concealing a shift from active valuation to habitual control. Attention is the mechanism that makes this shift possible.
