Choice modelling

Choice modelling attempts to model the decision process of an individual or segment via revealed preferences or stated preferences made in a particular context or contexts. Typically, it attempts to use discrete choices (A over B; B over A, B & C) in order to infer positions of the items (A, B and C) on some relevant latent scale (typically "utility" in economics and various related fields). Indeed many alternative models exist in econometrics, marketing, sociometrics and other fields, including utility maximization, optimization applied to consumer theory, and a plethora of other identification strategies which may be more or less accurate depending on the data, sample, hypothesis and the particular decision being modelled. In addition, choice modelling is regarded as the most suitable method for estimating consumers' willingness to pay for quality improvements in multiple dimensions.

There are a number of terms which are considered to be synonyms with the term choice modelling. Some are accurate (although typically discipline or continent specific) and some are used in industry applications, although considered inaccurate in academia (such as conjoint analysis).

These include the following:

Although disagreements in terminology persist, it is notable that the academic journal intended to provide a cross-disciplinary source of new and empirical research into the field is called the Journal of Choice Modelling.

The theory behind choice modelling was developed independently by economists and mathematical psychologists. The origins of choice modelling can be traced to Thurstone's research into food preferences in the 1920s and to random utility theory. In economics, random utility theory was then developed by Daniel McFadden and in mathematical psychology primarily by Duncan Luce and Anthony Marley. In essence, choice modelling assumes that the utility (benefit, or value) that an individual derives from item A over item B is a function of the frequency that (s)he chooses item A over item B in repeated choices. Due to his use of the normal distribution Thurstone was unable to generalise this binary choice into a multinomial choice framework (which required the multinomial logistic regression rather than probit link function), hence why the method languished for over 30 years. However, in the 1960s through 1980s the method was axiomatised and applied in a variety of types of study.

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