How does information affect vote choice in open-list PR systems? Evidence from a survey experiment mimicking real-world elections in Switzerland

Quoß, Franziska; Rudolph, Lukas; Däubler, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102837

Electoral Studies

2024

DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102837

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How does information affect vote choice in open-list PR systems? Evidence from a survey experiment mimicking real-world elections in Switzerland

Franziska Quoß,

Lukas Rudolph,

Thomas Däubler

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Ordering Effects versus Cognitive Burden: How Should We Structure Attributes in Conjoint Experiments?

Rudolph,

Freitag,

Thurner

2024

Public Opinion Quarterly

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Conjoint experiments offer a flexible way to elicit population preferences on complex decision tasks. We investigate whether we can improve respondents’ survey experience and, ultimately, choice quality by departing from the current recommendation of completely randomized conjoint attribute ordering. Such random ordering guarantees that potential bias from attribute order cancels out on average. However, in situations with many attributes, this may unnecessarily increase cognitive burden, as attributes belonging together conceptually are presented scattered across the choice table. Hence, we study experimentally whether purposeful ordering (“theoretically important” attributes first) or block randomized ordering (attributes belonging to the same theoretical concept displayed in randomized bundles) affects survey experience, response time, and choice itself, as compared to completely randomized ordering. Drawing on a complex preregistered choice design with nine attributes (N = 6,617), we find that ordering type affects neither self-reported survey experience, choice task timing, nor attribute weighting. Potentially, block randomization reduces cognitive burden for some subgroups. To our knowledge, we thereby provide the first systematic empirical evidence that ordering effects are likely of low relevance in conjoint choice experiments and that the trade-off between cognitive burden and ordering effects is minimal from the perspective of respondents, at least for our substantive application.

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Ordering Effects versus Cognitive Burden: How Should We Structure Attributes in Conjoint Experiments?

Rudolph,

Freitag,

Thurner

2024

Public Opinion Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

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How does information affect vote choice in open-list PR systems? Evidence from a survey experiment mimicking real-world elections in Switzerland

Cited by 1 publication

References 72 publications

Ordering Effects versus Cognitive Burden: How Should We Structure Attributes in Conjoint Experiments?

Ordering Effects versus Cognitive Burden: How Should We Structure Attributes in Conjoint Experiments?

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