A New Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Methodology for Latent Category Identification

Abstract

We introduce a new statistical procedure for the identification of unobserved categories that vary between individuals and in which objects may span multiple categories. This procedure can be used to analyze data from a proposed sorting task data in which individuals may simultaneously assign objects to multiple piles. The results of a synthetic example and a consumer psychology study involving categories of restaurant brands illustrate how the application of the proposed methodology to the new sorting task can account for a variety of categorization phenomena including multiple category memberships and for heterogeneity through individual differences in the saliency of latent category structures.

Keywords: categorization, unobserved Categories, heterogeneity, sorting task, consumer psychology

JEL Classification: C10, C20