The Efficacy of Seven Hypothetical Bias Mitigation Methods

Jerrod Penn, Qi Jiang and Wuyang Hu

No 360817, 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Hypothetical Bias is the difference between hypothetical and real behaviors, a central issue of convergent validity in stated preference methods. Numerous methods have been developed to mitigate hypothetical bias. We test seven such ex-ante, simul, and ex-post methods: Honest priming, cheap talk, oath, repeated opt-out reminder, default, unsure, and certainty follow-up and compare these outcomes to a hypothetical-control and incentivized treatment. We find that certainty follow-up successfully eliminates hypothetical bias. Default shows some success in reducing HB though does not eliminate it. All other methods show much more limited success at reducing HB.

Keywords: Institutional; and; Behavioral; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea25:360817

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.360817

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