Efficient Blocked Fractional Factorial Designs for Stated Choice Experiments of Size Two and Four

Abstract

Stated choice experiments are increasingly becoming popular due to their ability to optimize information gain with limited resources. Many designs have been developed for the selection of various attributes and their levels to form choice sets. One such design is blocked fractional factorial design (BFFD). Stated choice experiments for symmetric attributes of 4 choice sets of sizes 2 and 4 and 8 choice sets of sizes 2 and 4 were developed using BFFDs. Generators for the stated choice set of sizes 2 and 4 with resolution three, four, and five were developed. The alias structures and confounding effects for the designs were derived, as well as their clear effects if any for estimation. The $A$ -efficiency was used to compute the efficiencies of the proposed designs since it has better statistical properties. The computed efficiencies for the proposed designs reveal that 4 choice sets of size 4 designs are more efficient. Finally, a practical application of the proposed method was carried out for four choice sets of size 4 using $2_V^{5-1-2}$ design with attributes and levels of service quality in public transport.