Endless experimental lab

ENDLESS group members benefit from several facilities owned by the University of Naples Federico II. Among those, there is a consumer science lab (approximately 120 square meters), owned by the Dept. of Agricultural Sciences, that hosts: i) a dedicated focus group room for 15-18 participants (fully equipped with monitors, video cameras, tablets, recording system and QDA Miner software), ii) a plenary room for sensory and non-sensory experiments (12 individual workstations equipped with retractable pcs, full duplex microphones with acoustic echo cancelation audio system, plus a projector and a widescreen) and iii) a control room. Additionally, the lab holds 10 iPad Pros enabling field experiments. The core activities performed in the lab are related to incentive-compatible experiments that simulate a real market situation in which consumers perform purchase decisions in different information scenarios, and actually pay for the goods at the end of the experimental session. The core advantages of these methods over other mechanisms can be summarized in: avoiding hypothetical bias (the difference between hypothetical and actual statements of value), providing incentives for true elicitation of preferences, identifying causal treatment effects in subjects’ preferences and granting participants maximum freedom (compared to mechanisms in which participants can only accept/reject the price of a product described as a bundle of attributes). The lab holds a permanent panel of household food responsible (composed by over 200 individuals) and collaborates with several national and local consumer associations. Since its inauguration in 2018 over 30 researchers have runed experiments in the lab, involving more than 40 Universities, Public Institutions and private firms, 10 countries, 6000 participants, and more than 300 laboratory sessions.

Operating responsible:

Luigi Cembalo

Scientific responsible:

Riccardo Vecchio