The influence of time of day on decision fatigue in online food choice experiments
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The influence of time of day on decision fatigue in online food choice experiments. / Olsen, Søren Bøye; Meyerhoff, Jürgen; Mørkbak, Morten Raun; Bonnichsen, Ole.
In: British Food Journal, Vol. 119, No. 3, 2017, p. 497-510.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The influence of time of day on decision fatigue in online food choice experiments
AU - Olsen, Søren Bøye
AU - Meyerhoff, Jürgen
AU - Mørkbak, Morten Raun
AU - Bonnichsen, Ole
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Purpose: Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to the time of day when respondents answer questionnaires has been largely overlooked in this literature even though time of day related fatigue effects are well known in the psychology literature. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that variations in the time of day when respondents answer an online food choice experiment will translate into observable fatigue effects in the food choices. Design/methodology/approach: An empirical SCE concerning food choices is conducted using a web-based questionnaire for interviews in a pre-recruited online panel of consumers. Timestamps collected during the online interviews provide knowledge about the time of day at which each respondent has answered the survey. This information is linked with knowledge from a food sociology survey on typical meal times as well as biophysical research linking food intake to blood sugar and mental energy in order to generate a proxy variable for each respondent’s level of mental energy when answering the food choice tasks in the questionnaire. Findings: Results show evidence of a time of day effect on error variance in the stated food choices as well as the subsequently estimated market share predictions. Specifically, respondents provide less consistent answers during the afternoon than at other times of the day. Originality/value: The results indicate that time of day can affect responses to an online survey through increased fatigue and correspondingly less choice consistency. Thus, especially online surveys might account for this in data analysis or even restrict accessibility to the online survey for certain times of day.
AB - Purpose: Fatigue effects related to answering a sequence of choice tasks have received much scrutiny in the stated choice experiments (SCE) literature. However, decision fatigue related to the time of day when respondents answer questionnaires has been largely overlooked in this literature even though time of day related fatigue effects are well known in the psychology literature. The purpose of this paper is to hypothesize that variations in the time of day when respondents answer an online food choice experiment will translate into observable fatigue effects in the food choices. Design/methodology/approach: An empirical SCE concerning food choices is conducted using a web-based questionnaire for interviews in a pre-recruited online panel of consumers. Timestamps collected during the online interviews provide knowledge about the time of day at which each respondent has answered the survey. This information is linked with knowledge from a food sociology survey on typical meal times as well as biophysical research linking food intake to blood sugar and mental energy in order to generate a proxy variable for each respondent’s level of mental energy when answering the food choice tasks in the questionnaire. Findings: Results show evidence of a time of day effect on error variance in the stated food choices as well as the subsequently estimated market share predictions. Specifically, respondents provide less consistent answers during the afternoon than at other times of the day. Originality/value: The results indicate that time of day can affect responses to an online survey through increased fatigue and correspondingly less choice consistency. Thus, especially online surveys might account for this in data analysis or even restrict accessibility to the online survey for certain times of day.
KW - Error variance
KW - Fatigue effects
KW - Food choice
KW - Online surveying
KW - Paradata
KW - Stated choice experiments
KW - Time of day
U2 - 10.1108/BFJ-05-2016-0227
DO - 10.1108/BFJ-05-2016-0227
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85012928454
VL - 119
SP - 497
EP - 510
JO - British Food Journal
JF - British Food Journal
SN - 0007-070X
IS - 3
ER -
ID: 173947851