Ordered choices and heterogeneity in attribute processing

Abstract

A growing number of empirical studies involve the assessment of influences on a choice amongst ordered discrete alternatives. Ordered logit and probit models are well known, including extensions to accommodate random parameters and heteroscedasticity in unobserved variance. This paper extends the ordered choice random parameter model to permit random parameterization of thresholds and decomposition to establish observed sources of systematic variation in the threshold parameter distribution. We illustrate the empirical gains of this model in the context of an individual’s choice amongst unlabelled attribute packages of alternative tolled and non-tolled routes for the commuting trip, and the role that each attribute plays, in the sense of being ignored or not. The ordering represents the number of attributes attended to from the full fixed set. The evidence suggests that there is significant heterogeneity associated with the thresholds that can be connected to systematic sources associated with the respondent (i.e., gender) and the choice experiment (i.e., aggregation treatment of components of travel time).