Exploring the decoy effect to guide tobacco treatment choice: a randomized experiment

Abstract

ObjectivesGuidelines recommend that smokers participate in four or more counseling sessions when trying to quit, but smokers rarely engage in multiple sessions. The “decoy effect” is a cognitive bias that can cause consumer preferences for a “target” product to change when presented with a similar but inferior product (a “decoy”). This study tested the use of a decoy to guide smokers’ selection of a target number of counseling sessions. During an online survey, adult tobacco users (N = 93) were randomized to one of two groups that determined the answer choices they saw in response to a question assessing their interest in multi-session cessation counseling. Group A choose between two sessions or a “target” of five sessions. Group B was given a third “decoy” option of seven sessions. Binary logistic regression was used to compare groups on the proportion of participants selecting the “target.”ResultsAmong 90 participants with complete data, a decoy effect was not found. There was no significant difference between groups in the proportion of participants selecting the target of five sessions (47% in Group B vs. 53% in Group A; aOR = 0.76, 95%CI 0.48–1.19).Trial Registration This study was retrospectively registered at clinicaltrials.gov on December 13, 2019 (NCT04200157)

Changing Decisions: The Interaction between Framing and Decoy Effects

“…Indeed, this cognitive bias is studied in various fields such as economics and marketing [ 9 , 10 , 11 ], psychology and cognitive sciences [ 12 ], and sociology [ 13 ]. The decoy effect has been found to influence a variety of decisions from buying choices [ 9 ] to political preferences [ 14 ], hiring choices [ 15 ], health decisions [ 16 ], and choosing a romantic partner [ 17 ]. Individuals of all ages are susceptible to the decoy cognitive bias [ 18 ].…”

Decoy Effect on Consumers' Purchase Behaviors in Relation to Meat Products: Comparison of Pork and Chicken

“…The study also has certain limitations. First, the expansion set in this experiment contained four types of products, compared with the expansion sets containing three types of products in the studies of Sellers-Rubio and Nicolau-Gonzalbez (2015), Rogers et al (2020), which may limit the identification of consumers of dominant products and limit the strength of the decoy effect. In addition, the method of comparative choice experiment adopted in this study is a hypothetical experiment without real monetary delivery behavior, and the stated preference of consumers for products may deviate from the actual consumption choice.…”

“…A possible reason for this may be that the decoy attributes failed to make consumers perceive the utility differences between the target and competing dishes. In addition, Rogers et al (2020) have also attempted to use decoy programs to encourage smokers to participate in a specified number of smoking cessation meetings, but the time decoy failed to guide smokers to increase their choice of target programs. It could be that the decoy strength was too low or that quitters saw "attendance time" not as an opportunity cost but as a benefit.…”

The Influence of Decoy Effect on Consumer Purchasing Decisions at Starbucks Jakarta

“…Research related to the effect of decoy effect on consumers' own purchasing decisions has been reported in various publications. A current online experiment on the effects before and after the introduction of decoy options on tobacco counseling had the result that introducing decoy effect had no impact on smokers in the selection of tobacco counseling options [7]. Other studies investigated the consumers' choices of various brands ranging from store brands to premium brands.…”