Applied Economics Teaching Resources

an AAEA Journal

Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Teaching and Educational Methods

Learning about Consumer Demand from Student Surveys

Scott M. Swinton
Michigan State University

JEL Codes: A22, D12, Y1
Keywords: Active learning, demand curve, student survey, teaching microeconomics, willingness to pay

Publish Date: July 21, 2021
volume 3, Issue 3

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Abstract

Active learning can help students to grasp abstract economic concepts and become acquainted with quantitative data analysis. This paper describes how a survey of willingness to pay for pizza that is designed, executed, analyzed, and interpreted by students can motivate learning about consumer demand. The approach, which can be adapted to other consumption goods, builds understanding of consumer demand from the level of the individual to the market.

About the Authors: Scott M. Swinton is chairperson and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University (Corresponding author: swintons@msu.edu). Acknowledgements: The author thanks Judhajit Chakraborty for comments and Qualtrics programming assistance, and Abubakr Ayesh, David Hennessy, Maria Porter, and Hanzhe Zhang for helpful comments. This paper was found by the Human Research Protection Program at Michigan State University not to qualify as human subject research (correspondence of May 26, 2021 on Study 00006270).

Copyright is governed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA

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