Ambiguity Seeking and Status Quo Bias from Three Experiments

Three experiments by Merce Roca of the University of Leeds investigate how individuals evaluate ambiguous alternatives. Findings show a status quo bias where participants preferred to retain an ambiguous option in their possession over an unambiguous one. The bias emerged across within- and between-subject designs, with and without incentives, and with different outcome distributions.

Use Cases

• Modeling status quo bias in decision-making based on experimental results described.
• Analyzing the effect of endowment on ambiguity attitudes based on the described experimental conditions.
• Testing descriptive models of choice that incorporate reference frames mentioned in the description.
• Studying the interaction between incentives and ambiguity preferences as suggested by the experimental setup.

Strengths

• Data is derived from three distinct experiments, suggesting multiple validation points.
• Experimental design varied incentives, outcome distributions, and endowment methods, as stated in the description.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

University of Leeds

Collection Method

Data likely collected from controlled laboratory experiments as described.