Utility Function Switching During Residential Search

Abstract

Within the context of a man-computer simulation game, the individual's use of utility functions during residential search is shown to be influenced by the amount of searching, the information load describing apartment alternatives, and his/her situational variables. The findings were that there was little support for the hypothesis of a phased decision strategy in which the individual switches from using noncompensatory utility functions early in search, to using compensatory forms prior to the terminal choice. Rather, the student subjects switched between members of the same “families” of utility functions: subgroup one subjects used different forms of conjunctive utility function during search and subgroup two subjects used different disjunctive forms. The lack of observation of the phased decision strategy was explained in terms of the situational constraints of the subjects. Unfortunately, two alternative explanations of the observed utility function switching involved either definitional errors of when search was being terminated or the presence of specification errors in the algebraic models of utility functions.

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