Research from behavioral psychology and experimental economics asserts that individuals construct preferences on a case-by-case basis when called to make a decision. A common, implicit assumption in engineering design is that user preferences exist a priori. Thus, preference elicitation methods used in design decision making can lead to preference inconsistencies across elicitation scenarios. T...

Critiques of contingent valuation in the early 1990s (Hausman NOAA Panel) appear to have accelerated rcscarch efforts to investigate the use of conjoint analysis and choice-based methods for eliciting nonmarket values (Adamowicz, Louviere, and Williams; Adamowicz et al.; Garrod and Willis; Johnson and Desvousges; Johnston and Swallow; Holmes, Zinkhan, and Mcrccr; Layton and Lee; Mackenzie; Opal...

This paper explores the possibility of basing economic appraisal on the measurement of experienced utility (utility as hedonic experience) rather than decision utility (utility as a representation of preference). Because of underestimation of the extent of hedonic adaptation to changed circumstances and because of the ‘‘focusing illusion’’ (exaggerating the importance of the current focus of on...