Status-Quo Effect in Choice Modeling: Protest Beliefs, Attitudes, and Task Complexity

Abstract

The status-quo effect is a well known phenomenon in individual decision making. Most decisions include a status-quo alternative, i.e., doing nothing or maintaining one’s current or previous situation. Several studies investigating individual decision making, among them choice experiments, have shown that respondents disproportionately often choose the status-quo alternative. However, it is still an open question what motivates people to choose the status quo more often than the other alternatives. The present paper discusses three potential determinants of a status-quo effect in a choice experiment. These are protest beliefs, attitude toward the environmental change, and perceived task complexity. The data come from two choice experiments employed to value changes in forest biodiversity due to forest conversion in two German regions. The results show that the likelihood of choosing the status quo increases with perceived task complexity and stronger protest beliefs, while it decreases with a stronger positive attitude toward forest conversion. The influence of perceived task complexity is rather instable.