TITLE: INTERTEMPORAL PREFERENCES AND ASYMMETRIC ATTENTION TO OPPORTUNITY COSTS: A STUDY ON THE NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF FOOD CHOICE
We are pleased to invite you to a guest seminar presentation with the aforementioned title to be held at the College of Economics and Business Studies (CoEBS – Conference Room) on Thursday 6 July 2023 from 2pm.
The presentation will be delivered by Christopher Gustafson, an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, US. Before starting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Gustafson was a post-doctoral scholar based in Iringa for nearly 3 years on a collaborative project between Sokoine University of Agriculture and the University of California, Davis.
Dr. Gustafson’s presentation will focus on the Intertemporal preferences and asymmetric attention to opportunity costs: a study on the nutritional quality of food choice. The economic model of human choice—whether neoclassical or behavioral—posits the decision-maker as basing decisions on all attributes of the choices faced. However, widespread evidence in neuroscience and psychology shows that attention is a limited resource, suggesting that people may overlook relevant attributes, especially when facing choices that they make frequently. In particular, people may overlook opportunity costs of choices that occur in the future. Food choice, which has significant impacts on individuals’ health status, is one of the choices people make most frequently. In this novel study integrating preferences with attention, the results show that attention to future opportunity costs of food choices faced is markedly more important in differentiating the nutritional quality of choices than traditional measures of preferences. These findings have important implications for policy because while preferences are highly stable within an individual across time, attention can much more easily be directed to overlooked aspects of choice.
We believe that Dr. Gustafson’s presentation will provide interested staff and postgraduate students with valuable insights into new research on decision-making, especially when the impacts of those decisions occur across time.
We look forward to your attendance at this exciting seminar.
