Tailoring value elicitation to decision makers' numeracy and fluency: Expressing value judgments in numbers or words

•We compare the experience of eliciting values with a numerical and a non-numerical technique.•We contrast the experience of decision-makers' with different ability with numbers and words.•Experience and preference for technique depend on the decision maker's abilities.•More fluent decision-makers have a better experience with the non-numeric MACBETH technique, more numerate with the numeric direct rating technique.•Decision makers' numeracy and fluency are to be taken into account when choosing a value elicitation technique.

In organizational settings, options evaluation requires managers to express value judgments on multiple criteria. This research investigates the influence of decision makers' numeracy (ability to use appropriate numerical principles) and fluency (ability to express oneself in words) on their subjective experience of value elicitation as supported by two different techniques: direct rating and MACBETH. The former asks for value judgments to be expressed numerically, the latter non-numerically. The results of our experiment indicate that the two techniques are not psychologically equivalent: decision makers with higher numeracy express values more easily when assisted by the numerical technique whereas decision makers with higher fluency find value elicitation easier with the non-numerical technique. These findings highlight the importance of tailoring value elicitation to decision makers' numeracy and fluency. Implications for decision scientists and analysts are discussed.