Good decisions, bad decisions: the interaction of process and outcome in evaluations of decision quality

Joseph L. Arvai and Ann Froschauer

Journal of Risk Research, 2010, vol. 13, issue 7, 845-859

Abstract: Process-based considerations are generally accepted by experts and analysts as being the fundamental drivers of decision quality. However, little work has been done to account for the role of a risk management decision's outcome as a key driver of the public judgments about decision quality. To this end, the objective of the research reported here was straightforward to determine -- via an experiment -- the relative importance of decision-making process and the associated outcome in lay evaluations of decision quality. Our results demonstrate that people seem to have a difficult time unpacking decision-making processes, even ones they strongly prefer, from their associated outcomes when evaluating decision quality. From a practical standpoint, our results cast doubt on the generally accepted belief that participatory and deliberative decision-making processes (e.g., for risk management) will -- on their own -- contribute to positive evaluations of decision quality.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669871003660767 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:13:y:2010:i:7:p:845-859

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669871003660767

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().