The Effect of Set Composition on Stopping Behavior in a Finite Search Among Assortments

The process by which individuals make sequential searches among choice sets prior to choosing a single item is examined. Economic search theory prescribes that such searches should be made by focusing on expectations of the maximum utility likely to be found in each set, ignoring external features of sets such as their complexity. Empirical research in psychology, however, suggests that search behavior may be highly influenced by set features, most notably a tendency to defer choices from sets that are perceived as difficult to evaluate. An experimental investigation of choice-set search reveals that stopping decisions are indeed influenced by normatively irrelevant external features of sets, but not in a way that is completely consistent with previous work on context effects. In particular, we find that individuals are likely to stop sooner in search when encountering larger versus smaller choice sets (holding their maximum utilities constant), and decisions to stop are unaffected by two traditional measures of difficulty: whether a choice set lacks dominant options and the similarity of overall utilities of options in a set. Implications of the work for the ability to generalize findings in static choice to dynamic task settings are explored.