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A Study of Consumer Behavior Using Laboratory Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Philippe Février  and
Michael Visser
Philippe Février*
Affiliation:
Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique (CREST), 28 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris, France
Michael Visser*
Affiliation:
Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique (CREST), 28 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris, France
*
email: fevrier@ensae.fr
email: visser@ensae.fr
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Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experiment in which subjects had to buy real products in 5 different budget/price situations. Subjects were randomly drawn from the population of a medium-sized French city, and some of their socio-economic characteristics were recorded. We check the consistency of product choices with the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preferences (GARP), and find that 29% of the subjects are GARP-inconsistent. This inconsistency rate is slightly lower than the ones found in comparable studies. A possible explanation for our lower rate of GARP violations might be that the subjects in our study were confronted with less budget/price situations. In looking for determinants of the GARP violations, we find that gender, the size of the household, the degree of switching between different products, and the times spent on performing experimental tasks have significant impacts on the probability of GARP-inconsistency.

Keywords

consumer behaviorexperimental economicsGARP tests

JEL classification

D12: Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 2004 , pp. 93 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Economic Science Association

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