The Effect Of Mental Simulation And Assortment Size On Information Processing Under Different Frame

The information processing process of consumption decision is of great significance in decision making.With the explosive growth of the number of goods,researchers gradually attach importance to the study of the number of options on decision making.Previous studies have found that the increase in the number of options provides consumers with more diverse choices,making consumers feel freer to make decisions,so that they prefer to make decisions in the large assortment set.But more researchers have found that having too many options causes people to delay or even avoid making a choice;In some cases,too many choices reduce the quality of decision-making;It also affects the subjective experience of decision-making.Is it because the increasing number of options affects the information processing process,and therefore the quality and experience of decisions? According to decision construction theory,consumers’ preferences are constructed according to different strategies based on situation and task requirements.Then,will the manipulation of psychological simulation spontaneously occurring in decision-making have different effects on information processing? In addition,does the decision of keeping options and the decision of excluding options also produce different information processing?In this paper,the influence of mental simulation and assortment set on information processing in consumer decision making is studied under the choice frame and the rejection frame using the reference information board paradigm.The paper contains two formal experiments: a mixed experimental design of 3(mental simulation: process simulation,outcome simulation,control group)× 2(assortment size: large assortment size,small assortment size),in which the assortment size is an within-subject variable.The aim is to explore the influence of different types of mental simulation and the different size of choice set on information processing under the select frame(study 1)and the rejection frame(study 2).The results show that(1)in the selection and reject the two frameworks,the decision-making process of different assortment size has significant differences,compared with the small assortment,select centralized information search depth is lower,the processing time is longer,the search for information more selective,use more processing method based on attribute,the use of the compensatory strategies significantly more than the use of compensatory strategies;(2)The influence of psychological simulation on consumption decision-making process is different under the two frames.In the selection framework,the processing depth of the process simulation is significantly higher than that of the outcome simulation and the control condition by combining search depth and processing time.In terms of processing variability and search pattern,the main effect of mental simulation was not significant.In the rejection frame,considering the comprehensive search depth and processing time,the processing time of process simulation was significantly higher than that of outcome simulation and control group,although the processing depth of process simulation was not different from that of other groups.In the processing variability,the simulation of the outcome is more selective in processing information than the other two groups.In terms of search mode,the subjects were more likely to process and evaluate the options as a whole under the simulation condition.(3)Under the rejection framework,it is found that with the development of the decision-making stage,the processing depth decreases gradually,and the processing of options becomes more selective.With the reduction of information,the processing time also decreases gradually,and the search mode from alternative-based process to the attribute-based processing.