Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

This paper seeks to determine if the order in which a set of options are presented affects a consumer’s preferences for those options in a high-stakes environment. While previous studies have found evidence for order effects in consumer preferences, this is the first paper to test for order effects in a decision which has long-term serious consequences for the decision maker: career choice. Additionally, this paper uses complete consumer preference rankings of options instead of binary choice data, which allows for deeper insight into consumer preferences. The author uses evidence from a randomized control trial in which 1100 cadets at the United States Military Academy submitted a complete preference ordering of possible assignments in the Army for use in a matching algorithm. The author finds small but statistically significant effects. These results confirm previous findings in studies of order effects, but in a higher-stakes environment using more detailed data. The results have immediate applications at the United States Military Academy, but they also have broader implications in situations involving choice from lists, career choice, and matching markets.