Using crowdsourcing to study the differential effects of cross-drug withdrawal for cigarettes and opioids in a behavioral economic demand framework

Notes on demand: Conceptual and empirical benefits of applying Rachlin's discounting equation to demand data

OBJECTIVE

Howard Rachlin wrote extensively on how value diminishes in a hyperbolic form, and he contributed to understanding choice processes between different commodities as a molar pattern of behavior. The field of behavioral economic demand has been dominated by exponential decay functions, indicating that decreases in consumption of a commodity are best fit by exponential functions. Because of the success of Rachlin's equation at describing how hyperbolic decay affects the value of a commodity across various factors (e.g., delay, probability, social distance), we attempted to extend his equation to behavioral economic demand data for alcohol and opioids.

METHOD

Rachlin's discounting equation was applied to estimate consumption on alcohol purchase task data and nonhuman drug demand data. We compared results of his equation to the exponentiated demand equation using both a mixed-effects modeling approach and a two-stage approach.

RESULTS

Rachlin's equation provided better fits to consumption data than the exponentiated equation for both mixed-effects and two-stage modeling. We also found that traditional demand metrics, such as Pmax, can be derived analytically when using Rachlin's equation. Certain metrics derived from Rachlin's equation appeared to be related to clinical covariates in ways similar to the exponentiated equation.

CONCLUSIONS

Rachlin's equation better described demand data than did the exponentiated equation, indicating that demand for a commodity may decrease hyperbolically rather than exponentially. Other benefits of his equation are that it does not have the same pitfalls as the current exponential equations and is relatively straightforward in its conceptualization when applied to demand data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Interest in and perceived effectiveness of contingency management among alcohol drinkers using behavioral economic purchase tasks

Contingency management (CM), in which financial incentives are provided upon verification of abstinence from alcohol, cigarettes, and/or illicit substances, is one of the most highly effective and empirically supported treatments for substance use disorders. However, the financial cost of implementation has been identified as a major barrier to implementation of this treatment. The purpose of this study was to develop behavioral economic purchase tasks to assess interest in CM as a function of treatment cost and perceived effectiveness of CM as a function of abstinence incentive size in alcohol drinkers. Alcohol drinkers recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) completed behavioral economic purchase tasks measuring demand for CM based on targeted abstinence intervals and treatment effectiveness and alcohol use disorder severity assessments. Nonlinear mixed-effects modeling was used to fit demand curves and assess the relationship between individual characteristics and demand metrics for CM. Results reveal that participants reported higher probability of remaining abstinent from drinking when offered larger incentives and required larger incentives when duration of abstinence required to earn the incentive was increased. Additionally, willingness to pay for treatment increased as effectiveness of treatment increased. Abstinence interval and treatment effectiveness are important features to consider when developing effective CM for widespread use, as these variables affected participants' likelihood of being abstinent and their interest in treatment. Future work will validate these assessments with actual treatment outcomes and determine predictors of CM treatment effectiveness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Extra-experimental scarcity impacts hypothetical operant demand: A natural SARS-CoV-2 eperiment

Behavioral economic demand models quantify the extent to which an organism defends its consumption of a commodity. Commodity purchase tasks permit humans a quick yet psychometrically sound approach to assessing commodity demand for various retail products. Operant behavioral economic literature suggests economy type (open vs closed) can significantly alter demand, yet this effect is largely undocumented in the commodity purchase task literature. In this study, we leveraged the market pressures for retail goods (hand lotion and sanitizer; paper towels and toilet paper; soda and water) resulting from SARS-CoV-2 into a natural experiment comparing within-subject demand across two time-points during the pandemic using a crowdsourced approach. Results suggest that hypothetical commodity purchase tasks are sensitive to extra-experimental market pressures (e.g., scarcity due to the closing of economies), adding additional confidence to the self-report nature of purchase task responding and providing further construct validity to these approaches.

Hyperbolic discounting and exponentiated demand: Modeling demand for cigarettes in three dimensions

Behavioral economics has been a fruitful area of research in substance use. Mathematical descriptions of how individuals temporally discount the value of a commodity have been correlated with substance use and mathematical descriptions of drug consumption decreasing as a function of price (i.e., demand) predict maladaptive substance use. While there is a logical assumption that temporal factors affect demand for a drug, little has been done to merge these models. Thus, the purpose of this study was to combine models of discounting and demand, extending Howard Rachlin's work and contributions to novel areas of study. Data from 85 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) who completed a hypothetical cigarette purchase task that included price of and delay to cigarettes were analyzed. Multilevel modeling was used to determine descriptive accuracy of combined additive and multiplicative models of discounting and demand. Of the discounting models used in conjunction with the exponentiated demand equation, the Rachlin hyperboloid best described the delay dimension of consumption. The multiplicative version of the Rachlin equation applied to both delay and price outperformed other models tested. Therefore, existing models of discounting and demand can be extended to modeling consumption data from complex multidimensional experimental arrangements.

Behavioral economic demand modeling chronology, complexities, and considerations: Much ado about zeros

Behavioral economic demand has been shown to have high utility in quantifying the value or consumption of a commodity. Demand describes the relationship between cost and consumption of a commodity, and tends to be curvilinear with consumption approaching zero as the cost increases to a sufficiently high cost to suppress consumption completely. Over a period spanning greater than three decades, behavioral economists have made great strides in the modeling of demand and addressing analytical challenges, although this work is not complete and unresolved challenges remain. The analytical challenges associated with modeling zeros both when they arise as consumption values of zero and when consumption at zero cost is assessed have been a substantial part of this evolution in models. The goals of this methodological review are to provide a historical overview of the major behavioral economic demand models that have been proposed, describe some of the common difficulties with analyzing behavioral economic demand, and discuss general considerations for the analysis of demand. In an environment with evolving and multiple competing analytical practices, we conclude that researchers can maximize scientific rigor by embracing transparency in their analysis choices and employing techniques such as sensitivity analyses to determine if their analysis choices impact the conclusions of their experiments.