Context Dependent Process Heuristics and Choice Analysis: A note on the Behavioural Setting Guiding the Research Focus

Abstract

This note is written to remind us of the recognition of behavioural realism in the economic literature over 60 years ago, which seems to have been given limited recognition in the formal axiomatic development of economic theories commonly associated with the application of discrete choice models, especially where the interest is on obtaining welfare measures such as willingness to pay estimates of specific attributes for use in cost-benefit analysis. We need to be reminded from time to time of the importance of context dependency in defining a choice problem and the value that behavioural realism can add despite risks of violating often some axioms of economic rationality and utility maximisation.