A Rational Origin Obtained by the Method of Contingent Paired Comparisons

Abstract
A new paired comparison method, based upon choices between lotteries, is developed for the measurement of utilities of objects with respect to the utility of receiving nothing, i.e., the status quo. The method is used to estimate the utilities of four birthday gifts. These objects had also been studied in an earlier experiment which used choices between single objects and pairs of objects to determine a rational origin. A comparison of the results of the two experiments indicates that both methods scale objects with respect to the same rational origin and unit of measurement.

This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit: