Best-worst scaling (BWS) is an extension of the method of paired comparison to multiple choices that asks participants to choose both the most and the least attractive options or features from a set of choices. It is an increasingly popular way for academics and practitioners in social science, business, and other disciplines to study and model choice. This book provides an authoritative and systematic treatment of best-worst scaling, introducing readers to the theory and methods for three broad classes of applications. It uses a variety of case studies to illustrate simple but reliable ways to design, implement, apply, and analyze choice data in specific contexts, and showcases the wide range of potential applications across many different disciplines. Best-worst scaling avoids many rating scale problems and will appeal to those wanting to measure subjective quantities with known measurement properties that can be easily interpreted and applied.

Understanding and predicting the behavior of decision makers when choosing among discrete goods has been one of the most fruitful areas of applied research over the past thirty years. An understanding of individual consumer behavior can lead to significant changes in product or service design, pricing strategy, distribution channel and communication strategy selection, as well as public welfare analysis. This book is a reference work dealing with the study and prediction of consumer choice behavior, concentrating on stated preference (SP) methods. It shows how SP methods can be implemented, from experimental design to econometric modeling. The book also presents an update of econometric approaches to choice modeling.