“Bi-Matching”: A New Preference Assessment Method to Reduce Compatibility Effects
提出一种名为“双匹配”的新偏好评估方法，通过同时调整两个属性来减少传统权衡判断中的尺度兼容性偏差。四个实验表明，该方法能产生介于重要与不重要属性匹配之间的权衡，降低响应误差，为决策者构建价值权衡提供了有效替代方案。
Preference models and utility functions are often assessed by eliciting value trade-offs among attributes. Prior research has shown that trade-off judgments can be biased in systematic ways: for example, the attribute which is used as response receives more relative subjective weight, i.e. the so-called scale compatibility effects (Tversky et al. [Tversky, A., S. Sattath, P. Slovic. 1988. Contingent weighting in judgment and choice. Psych. Rev. 95 371–384.]). This paper proposes a new procedure to elicit value trade-offs called bidimensional matching, or “bi-matching”, designed to alleviate this effect. Bi-matching differs from traditional trade-off judgments, in that both attributes are adjusted simultaneously to reach indifference judgments. Bi-matching is compared with simple matching and choice in four experimental studies, to measure preferences for lotteries and riskless multiattribute alternatives. The main results are: (1) bi-matching produces trade-offs intermediate between those derived from matching on the “more important” attribute and matching on the less important attribute, although closer to the former; (2) the trade-offs derived from choice reflect more relative weight on the more important dimension than those from bi-matching; (3) bi-matching appears to reduce response error compared to standard matching. These results are generally consistent with theoretical predictions. We discuss the normative question of which preference assessment method is preferable. The current results as a whole and the built-in features of the bi-matching procedure already position this elicitation method as a worthwhile alternative to traditional methods for helping decision-makers introspect and construct their value trade-offs.