Our research interests lie mainly in the field of economic decisions making but extends to related fields like decision making in health contexts. Within economic decision making our research focuses on decision making under risk, consumer behavior, strategic interactions, and intertemporal choices. Thereby the main research goal is to identify, quantify, and formally describe factors that influence decision behavior. These factors can either be individual, contextual, or situational in nature. Individual factors are factors directly related to the decision maker but cannot be changed by him or her. Individual factors include age, gender, personality traits, but also the genetic makeup. Contextual factors, in contrast, are related to the choice object or environment. Prominent contextual influences on choice behavior include, for example, the framing of the choice object, the composition of the choice set, or the presence of other actors. Situational factors include especially stress and incidental emotion (i.e., emotions not related to the choice problem).

While a first step in the research process would be to describe influencing factors of choice behavior within the framework of existing choice models, the long-term goal of my research is to use these findings to develop advanced models and theories of decision behavior that account for these factors. Ideally, one single model can be identified to account for choice behavior in all (or least two) of the above-mentioned fields of decision making. I therefore plan to adapt and apply existing choice models to other fields of decision making.