The BBRL is a world
class behavioral
business research
facility in the
Walton College of
Business at the
University of
Arkansas. There are
three interconnected
labs at the BBRL: a
large computer lab,
a series of breakout
rooms, and a large
staging area. These
labs are operated
from a single state
of the art
observation room.
Behavioral
researchers use the
facility to study a
wide variety of
business and
economic topics
including strategic
behavior,
worker-employer
relations,
information
processing, group
problem solving, and
decision making
under uncertainty.
The Walton
Research Laboratory
in the Center for
Academic Excellence
is an
interdisciplinary
resource for
studying human
behavior and
decision making. The
laboratory allows
researchers to test
current theories in
business and
economics and
provide an empirical
basis for the
development of new
theories. The
facility enables
several different
types of research
experiments. For
example, the break
out rooms enable
researcher to study
group dynamics,
group decision
making,
communication, and
distributed
tasks. This impacts
everything from jury
deliberations, to
directing focus
groups for new
products, to
managing companies
with offices across
the globe, to
developing
information
systems. The
flexibility of the
large staging area
allows researchers
to recreate physical
environments. Such a
resource allows
researchers to study
how shelf
arrangements impact
buying behavior, how
the excitement of a
live auction impacts
bidding behavior, or
how the arrangement
of goods impacts
bidding in a silent
charity auction.
