Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Letter to the parents also in Chinese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-139).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-171).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Letter to the parents also in Chinese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-139). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Kentucky, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-81).

This was a replication of a study performed by Szalma and Hancock (2006). The goal of the research was to determine whether a participant's choice (or perceived choice) of an "easy" or "hard" task had a significant effect on their performances on vigilance tasks. There were 2 groups of participants; each group chose their task difficulty and the first group received their choice, while the second group received the opposite condition of that which they requested. Research on factors which affect vigilance has practical implications for areas such as military surveillance and quality control, which require employees to observe monitors for extended periods of time for rare instances of critical signals.

This thesis adds to the existing literature on the too-much-choice effect. The effect documents a range of negative consequences as a result of choosing from extensive choice sets, such as increased decision difficulty, increased deferment likelihood, and increased feelings of uncertainty, regret and dissatisfaction with chosen options. The research presented in this thesis investigates the effect of choice amount in the novel domain of volunteering, specifically which organisation to volunteer for. This is an experiential choice rather than the material choices typically studied. The first three field studies focussed on real volunteering recruitment ‘events’ to gain preliminary insight into this new context. Study 1 demonstrated that an opt-out request for future contact consent elicited the greatest compliance. Study 2 found that only around half of the students that had intended to volunteer at the beginning of a year had done so by the end, but for those that had done so, volunteering was a positive and beneficial experience. Study 3 demonstrated the effectiveness of volunteer ‘events’ for the recruitment of volunteers, despite there being an extensive number of organisations present. Five further studies used an experimental methodology and focussed on choosing from computer based choice sets to simulate online volunteer recruitment. Study 4 found evidence of the too-much-choice effect. The greater the number of options looked at on a real volunteering website, the greater was the likelihood of decision deferment. This was mediated by decision difficulty. Study 5 replicated these findings using a more controlled experimental design and hypothetical organisations. Studies 6, 7 and 8 investigated potential choice architectural moderators of the too-much-choice effect. Option categorisation facilitated students’ decisions but not non-students (Study 6), deferment likelihood was reduced if options were presented in a ‘box’ format rather than a ‘list’ format (Study 7) and option familiarity appeared to have no effects on decisions (Study 8). Overall, this research demonstrates that extensive choice can be problematic in the novel context of volunteering and it begins to investigate choice architectures that have the potential to help people deal with extensive choice. The limitations and implications of these findings in relation to volunteer recruitment are discussed as well as possible avenues for future research.

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