Participants' subsequent choices were affected as predicted.
The model focuses on how energy demand, residential energy technology penetration and transportation mode choices are affected by factors of density and mix of use in neighbourhood development.
Behavioral economics, a new area of research combining economics and psychology, has repeatedly documented how our apparently free choices are affected by the way options are presented to us.
But a paper soon to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research explores the way that these choices are affected by the body type of the other person eating.
Lisa DeBruine, of the University of Aberdeen, believes that today's women still face this dilemma and that their choices are affected by unconscious factors.In a paper published earlier this year Dr DeBruine found that women in countries with poor health statistics preferred men with masculine features more than those who lived in healthier societies.
Humans are more complex than, say, fish or squirrels, and even our simplest behavioural choices are affected by an array of volatile and unpredictable situational forces.
The book, which is already considered a classic, applies a rational-choice approach to social behavior, showing how individual choices are affected by social norms, peer pressure, a desire to emulate leaders and other group influences.
Although their focus and also their statistical models are different to ours, interestingly our insights are similar since both rankings are based on estimating how observed choices are affected by characteristics of potential alternatives.
Damm (2009) has used the Danish spatial dispersion policy as a natural experiment to show that location choices are affected by the presence of co-ethnics and other migrants as well as by economic factors such as access to jobs, education and housing, the unemployment rate and the provision of welfare benefits.
"Our food choices are affected by other factors such as the volume of fast food outlets on our streets and promotions of unhealthy foods in our shops, highlighting why our work to improve the nation's diet is so important". The Food Foundation is calling for government policy to ensure that low income households can afford to follow government's own recommendations for a healthy diet.
