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Monetary incentives and eye movements: an eye-tracking investigation in a risky choice experiment with real and hypothetical incentives

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Abstract

Although eye-tracking is useful for investigating economic decision-making processes, it remains unclear whether monetary incentives affect eye movements. The current study used a binary risky choice experiment with two incentive conditions: real incentive and hypothetical incentive. Eye movements, choices, and decision times were recorded and compared. For eye movements, participants’ total fixation durations, and visual transitions between probabilities and outcomes were analyzed. The choice distributions were almost identical between the two conditions. The decision times and total fixation durations were longer for the real incentive conditions. Visual transitions that are consistent with expected-utility-like models were less frequent in the real incentive conditions when the calculation of expected values of lotteries was easy. These findings indicate that decision-making processes, such as information processing patterns and the amount of cognitive effort, are affected by monetary incentives. To ensure that eye-tracking is used to examine economic decision-making processes appropriately, providing monetary incentives is important.

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Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

  1. Russo and Dosher (1983) published a seminal study that examined eye movements between and within alternatives in risky situations. See also (Arieli et al. 2011; Fiedler and Glöckner 2012; Glöckner and Herbold 2011; Stewart et al. 2016; Su et al. 2013). Johnson et al. (2008) used MouseLab to study the choice between gambling procedures. See Orquin and Loose (2013) for a broader review.

  2. Using information acquisition enables a better understanding of economic theories other than decision-making under risky conditions. See also Costa-Gomes et al. (2001); Devetag et al. (2016); Hristova and Grinberg (2005); Jiang et al. (2015); Johnson et al. (2002); Knoepfle et al. (2009); Reutskaja et al. (2011).

  3. Several studies have examined the relationships between incentives and other decision-making processes, such as working memory, neural mechanisms, decision time, and pupil dilation (Heitz et al. 2008; Kahneman and Peavler 1969; Kahneman et al. 1968; Kang et al. 2011; Morgenstern et al. 2013; Small et al. 2005; Wilcox 1993).

  4. Although eye-tracking and MouseLab are useful for analyzing information acquisition, eye-tracking has an advantage, because eye-tracking decreases the likelihood of influencing the decision process (Glöckner and Herbold 2011), and because eye-tracking records natural and unconscious movements whereas MouseLab requires a less natural information acquisition strategy (Lohse and Johnson 1996). Russo and Dosher (1983) argued that eye movements are relatively effortless, can be recorded non-reactively, and are not easily censored by participants.

  5. Tobii Technology T-120 was an integrated model with a display.

  6. The value was equivalent to a threshold 0.84 pixels/ms, with a 120 Hz eye tracker.

  7. The quality of eye-tracking was evaluated by a percentage, calculated by dividing the number of correctly identified gaze samples by the number of attempts to identify the gaze samples, where 100% indicated that eye movements were identified perfectly and 50% indicated that half of the eye movements were not identified. Participants below the 50% level were excluded from the analysis.

  8. The text in the figures is enlarged for readability. The actual size of the text was 20 pt. font to minimize peripheral vision effects.

  9. The location of lotteries (left or right) and the sequence of the choice task were counterbalanced. Each participant performed each task once. No time restriction was imposed in each task.

  10. 89.1% of gaze samples were inside the AOI.

  11. Russo and Dosher (1983); Russo and Rosen (1975) conducted the earliest study analyzing eye movements during multi-alternative choices and multi-attribute binary choices. Arieli et al. (2011); Fiedler and Glöckner (2012); Glöckner and Herbold (2011); Stewart et al. (2016); Su et al. (2013) are recent representative studies.

  12. See Brändstatter et al. (2006); Camerer (1995) for broad reviews about expected utility theory, deviations from the theory, and modification of the theory.

  13. See Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier (2011); Orquin and Loose (2013) for a broad review of heuristic models.

  14. The datasets analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

  15. Diagonal transitions were rarely observed. For each task and condition, on average, one diagonal transition was observed at most. Therefore, diagonal transitions were not analyzed.

  16. Binomial test, U1[HI]: p = 0.522, U2[HI]: p = 0.731, U3[HI]: p = 0.839, U4[HI]: p = 0.069, U5[HI]: p = 0.235, U6[HI]: p = 0.860, U7[HI]: p = 0.196, U1[RI]: p = 0.824, U2[RI]: p = 0.367, U3[RI]: p = 0.227, U4[RI]: p = 0.364, U5[RI]: p = 0.838, U6[RI]: p = 0.175, U7[RI]: p = 1.000.

  17. Binomial test, U1[HI]: p = 0.844, U2[HI]: p = 0.000, U3[HI]: p = 0.671, U4[HI]: p = 0.049, U5[HI]: p = 0.201, U6[HI]: p = 0.000, U7[HI]: p = 0.003, U1[RI]: p = 0.884, U2[RI]: p = 0.000, U3[RI]: p = 0.850, U4[RI]: p = 0.245, U5[RI]: p = 0.303, U6[RI]: p = 0.001, U7[RI]: p = 0.000.

  18. Arieli et al. (2011) analyzed visual transition only for tasks U1, U2, U3, and U4, but not for U5, U6, and U7.

  19. Dominance tasks U5 and U6 were not analyzed because almost all participants chose lottery A.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Yukihiko Funaki for his thoughtful guidance and support.

Funding

The author acknowledges support from JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 15H06685 and 19K13656.

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  1. Faculty of Comprehensive Management, Matsumoto University, 2095-1 Niimura, Matsumoto, Nagano, 390-1295, Japan

    Nobuyuki Uto

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Uto, N. Monetary incentives and eye movements: an eye-tracking investigation in a risky choice experiment with real and hypothetical incentives. Behaviormetrika 51, 75–97 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41237-023-00210-5

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