Abstract
People often find it difficult to make a choice out of a set of alternatives, thereby possibly resolving a choice problem in favor of a default option. Also, the presence of a default option may well have an influence on the choices of a decision maker. We here propose an abstract choice model in which choice avoidance emerges as a particular form of status quo bias. The model describes an otherwise standard decision maker who mentally constrains her choice problems with respect to a default option, the choice of which can be ascribed to either the agent's indecisiveness or there being no strictly better alternative within the constrained choice set. We show that, when the agent's choice behavior satisfies the classical rationality tenets across choice problems with an identical status quo alternative, the model reduces to that of Masatlioglu and Ok (2009).