THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF APPLICANT BEHAVIOUR IN HIGHER EDUCATION CHOICE: STAGE SPECIFICITY, THE ABSENCE OF A DETECTABLE PRICE THRESHOLD, AND THE LIMITS OF AGGREGATE INFERENCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22822992Abstract
Four theoretical approaches to applicant behaviour generate different predictions regarding how institutional attributes are associated with higher education choice. This article specifies these predictions, empirically examines the two that generate sufficiently differentiated predictions for a panel of twenty anonymised higher education institutions in Uzbekistan, and identifies a third approach whose prediction cannot be meaningfully evaluated using the available aggregate data. The principal discriminating construct is stage specificity, introduced here as the degree to which an attribute is associated with one stage of the decision process rather than the other. The results indicate a high degree of stage specificity. Tuition has a t-statistic of 3.81 at the application stage and 1.44 at the commitment stage, while the verifiable-claim share has corresponding t-statistics of 0.81 and 12.90, and evidence distance has t-statistics of 0.54 and 10.76. Mean stage specificity across the three interpretable attributes is 0.87, and none of the three attributes is statistically significant at both stages. Tuition is significantly associated with the application stage but not with the commitment stage, whereas the informationrelated attributes are significantly associated with commitment but not with applications. This pattern provides limited support for a single-stage compensatory interpretation, under which attributes are expected to enter a common decision process, and is instead consistent with the predictions of a two-stage process model. The article subsequently examines the price-threshold prediction derived from non-compensatory screening theory across eleven candidate threshold values. No statistically significant threshold is detected. The strongest candidate, at UZS 30 million, increases R² from 0.978 to 0.982, with the additional slope having a t-statistic of −1.67. This null result is treated as inconclusive rather than as evidence against the screening hypothesis. If individual applicants have heterogeneous price thresholds, aggregation may smooth the resulting discontinuities at the institutional level. Consequently, the aggregate research design may have limited ability to detect the individual-level threshold behaviour predicted by the theory.Keywords
applicant behaviour, higher education choice, two-stage decision process, non-compensatory screening, ecological inference, higher education, Uzbekistan.References
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