Distributing fixed resources over many items. An experimental interface

Abstract

We propose an experimental interface designed to elicit the distribution of a budget of resources over a very large number of items. The interface has two related innovations. First, it asks participants to indicate how they allocate the resources by drawing a curve over a stylized representation of the many items. Second, because the curve represents relative, rather than absolute, levels of resources, it remains visually stable when a participant revises any specific allocation, while the program automatically enforces the budget constraint. We describe the application of the interface to a Blotto game with more than 200 items, but the approach can be adapted flexibly to general problems of resource allocations over many items, under a budget constraint.