Mitigating hypothetical bias in choice Experiments: An in-depth review on the use of cheap talk

Abstract

Cheap Talk is one of the most popular techniques used to mitigate hypothetical bias in choice experiments, but there is uncertainty about how it is used by researchers, and its effectiveness. We reviewed and explored in-depth how cheap talk is used and how effective it is in mitigating hypothetical bias by examining 172 articles in the literature using a systematic review. The results show that cheap talk is largely used in choice experiment studies, but only a minority of articles make the cheap talk scripts available to the readers. Furthermore, we found that there is a large heterogeneity on how the cheap talk script is used by researchers in terms of length, words used, structure, and its effectiveness. This review provides useful insights about the implementation of cheap talk in choice experiments as well as outline several future research avenues that could be useful in improving the validity and reliability of data collected using hypothetical choice experiments.