Does attribute cut-off elicitation affect choice consistency? Contrasting hypothetical and real-money choice experiments

We tested our models using an empirical dataset generated by a field choice experiment on consumers׳ preferences for apples. The data show that most respondents stated they had cut-off values in mind when buying apples, but, as expected, in most cases they violated them in their actual choices. Estimation of heteroskedastic logit models shows that the proposed measures related to stated cut-offs have a systematic effect on the variance of the error term, but only in the hypothetical treatment. That is, respondents were found to be less consistent as the number of potential violations or the number of cut-offs stated at the most severe level increased. In the real-money treatment, neither of the coefficients of the two measures was statistically significant. This may indicate that when choices are binding, consumers put necessary effort into each choice card, regardless of the number of potential violations, and they are more consistent.