Behavioral economics: Principles, procedures, and utility for applied behavior analysis (original) (raw)
Related papers
Behavioral Economics in Consumer Behavior Analysis
The Behavior Analyst, 2016
Since its inception, consumer behavior analysis has sought to meld behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing science into a unified whole that comprehends consumer behavior in a unique way (Foxall, 1990/2004, 2011; Hantula, DiClemente, & Rajala, 2001). A special issue of the journal Managerial and Decision Economics was recently devoted to operant behavioral economics, and I am delighted that this special issue of The Behavior Analyst brings together further contributions of that discipline to consumer behavior analysis. With it, I would like to renew my invitation to consumer behavior analysis (Foxall, 2010): This is an inclusive field of endeavor, and all are welcome to the interdisciplinary party. The term behavioral economics has recently become popular in a number of contexts, but it refers to rather different approaches that display little by way of shared methodology or even a common view of the nature of human behavior and the factors of which it is a function. The behavioral economics of Herbert Simon (e.g., 1979) suggests, for instance, that firms and consumers do not maximize but "satisfice," producing satisfactory results rather than acting optimally, simply because humans do not have the information or the cognitive skills that would be required to maximize. Moreover, Kahneman and Tversky (e.g., 1984) have demonstrated dramatically that people's behavior often deviates substantially from the norms of economic theory. And a range of behavior change strategies such as "nudging," which entails making small changes in behavior-modifying it incrementally rather than seeking to make major alterations all at once-have seized the popular imagination (Sunstein & Thaler, 2009). All of these approaches actually try to go beyond economics as a discipline. To the extent they have anything in common, it is their critical view of orthodox economics and a desire to replace at least some of it with a combined psychology and economics framework of conceptualization and analysis. Above all, however, they seek to promote an approach to behavior that is more descriptive of what people actually do than is usually the case for economics in general. The behavioral economics that has its roots in the
Behavioral economics: Past, present, future
2004
Behavioral economics increases the explanatory power of economics by providing it with more realistic psychological foundations. This book consists of representative recent articles in behavioral economics. 1 Chapter 1 is intended to provide an introduction to the approach and methods of behavioral economics, and to some of its major findings, applications, and promising new directions. It also seeks to fill some unavoidable gaps in the chapters' coverage of topics.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1984
like behavioral psychology, is a science of behavior, albeit highly organized human behavior. The value of economic concepts for behavioral psychology rests on (1) their empirical validity when tested in the laboratory with individual subjects and (2) their uniqueness when compared to established behavioral concepts. Several fundamental concepts are introduced and illustrated by reference to experimental data: open and closed economies, elastic and inelastic demand, and substitution versus complementarity. Changes in absolute response rate are analyzed in relation to elasticity and intensity of demand. The economic concepts of substitution and complementarity are related to traditional behavioral studies of choice and to the matching relation. The economic approach has many implications for the future of behavioral research and theory. In general, economic concepts are grounded on a dynamic view of reinforcement. The closedeconomy methodology extends the generality of behavioral principles to situations in which response rate and obtained rate of reinforcement are interdependent. Analysis of results in terms of elasticity and intensity of demand promises to provide a more direct method for characterizing the effects of "motivational" variables. Future studies of choice should arrange heterogeneous reinforcers with varying elasticities, use closed economies, and modulate scarcity or income. The economic analysis can be extended to the study of performances that involve subtle discriminations or skilled movements that vary in accuracy or quality as opposed to rate or quantity, and thus permit examination of time/accuracy trade-offs.
Behavioral Economics: A Review & Bibliometric Analysis
Journal of Economics, Finance And Management Studies
urpose – Existing literature has been reviewed on Behavioral economics to analyze the theoretical foundation. This paper aims to study the trend of publication. Based on the analysis further research agenda will be analyzed. Research Method – Bibliometric analysis of papers from the web of science database has been conducted. Comprehensive explorations of papers on behavioral economics have been done. Systematic literature reviews of a few papers were also conducted to get insights into the directions and content of the research. Different analytical tables of the web of science have been presented. Further Vosviewer has also been utilized to represent the trend with the help of map, bar, treemap visualization techniques.
Behavioral Economics: Where Is It Heading?
The addition of “behavioral” to economics has given rise to a highly successful field of research. But, is it just a fashionable new trend or is it here to stay? More to the point, how does it differ from its close relative psychology? To answer these questions, the present article considers what behavioral economics is, and where it started, with the aim of trying to forecast what the status of it will be in the future. In forecasting where behavioral economics might be heading, the argument proposed here is that the best clues can be found in psychological research. If, as has been proposed here, behavioral economics partners research trends in psychology, then the futures of both will almost certainly be moving in the same direction. Both are beginning to, and will start to rely on online tools/mobile phone applications to collect richer data revealing dynamic tends over long time horizons, and as technology continues to facilitate ways of looking at group behaviour online, then larger scale studies examining interactions amongst multiple groups of people will become the norm rather than the exception. More specifically this article speculates on the future research focus of researchers in behavioral economics and the extent to which this will overlap with psychological research on judgment and decision-making.
Economic concepts for the analysis of behavior
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1980
A review of the relationship between schedule of reinforcement, response rate, and choice suggests that certain unifying concepts from economics can contribute to a more complete science of behavior. Four points are made: 1) a behavioral experiment is an economic system and its characteristics-open or closed-can strongly determine the results; 2) reinforcers can be distinguished by a functional property called elasticity; 3) reinforcers may interact as complements as well as substitutes; 4) no simple choice rule, such as strict matching, can account for all choice behavior.