These data were generated by the experiment reported in the paper 'Do consumers take advantage of common pricing standards? An experimental investigation', by Robert Sugden and Jiwei Zheng, forthcoming in Management Science. The experiment investigates consumers' responses to problems of price comparison when some but not all prices are Gaudeul and Sugden have hypothesized that, when some but not all competing products are priced in a common standard, consumers who are liable to make errors in cross-standard price comparisons use decision rules that discriminate in favor of common-standard offers. Such behavior incentivizes sellers to use common standards. We report an experimental test of this hypothesis, using choice tasks similar to those represented in the Gaudeul–Sugden model. We found that offers priced in common standards were more likely to inspected but less likely to be chosen, and that subjects gained little benefit from common pricing standards that applied to some but not all offers. Most subjects used ‘dominance editing’ operations which eliminated transparently dominated offers, either as an initial shortlisting device or while offers were being sorted. Because these operations discriminate against common-standard offers, their use incentivizes sellers not to use common standards. This network project brings together economists, psychologists, computer and complexity scientists from three leading centres for behavioural social science at Nottigham, Warwick and UEA. This group will lead a research programme with two broad objectives: (1) to develop and test cross-disciplinary models of human behaviour and behaviour change and (2) to draw out their implications for the formulation and evaluation of public policy. Foundational research will focus on three inter-related themes: (1) understanding individual behaviour and behaviour change; (2) understanding social and interactive behaviour; (3) rethinking the foundations of policy analysis. The project will explore implications of the basic science for policy via a series of applied projects connecting naturally with the three themes. These will include: the determinants of consumer credit behaviour, the formation of social values and strategies for evaluation of policies affecting health and safety. The research will integrate theoretical perspectives from multiple disciplines and utilize a wide range of complementary methodologies including: theoretical modeling of individuals, groups and complex systems; conceptual analysis; lab and field experiments; analysis of large data sets. The Network will promote high quality cross-disciplinary research and serve as a policy forum for understanding behaviour and behaviour change.

The data were generated in an economics experiment conducted at the Centre for Behavioral and Experimental Social Science Laboratory at the University of East Anglia in the summer of 2013. Full details of the experiment are provided in the paper referred to above. 171 subjects were recruited using a campus-wide online system. Most of the subjects were students from a wide range of academic disciplines, with ages ranging from 18 to 65. The experiment lasted approximately 65 minutes. Subjects faced a series of tasks, representing stylised problems of searching for the lowest price among a set of alternative ‘offers’. Price information was presented in different ways, varying in complexity; in some tasks, a subgroup of offers used a ‘common standard’ which simplified price comparisons with that subgroup. As is standard in economics experiments, subjects’ payments depended on their success in the task. The average payment was £10.76 per person. Payments ranged from £3.10 to £11.73.