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When being wasteful appears better than feeling wasteful

Author

Listed:
  • Ro'i Zultan

    (Department of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences University College London, UK)

  • Maya Bar-Hillel

    (Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

  • Nitsan Guy

Abstract

"Waste not want not" expresses our culture's aversion to waste. "I could have gotten the same thing for less" is a sentiment that can diminish pleasure in a transaction. We study people's willingness to "pay" to avoid this spoiler. In one scenario, participants imagined they were looking for a rental apartment, and had bought a subscription to an apartment listing. If a cheaper subscription had been declined, respondents preferred not to discover post hoc that it would have sufficed. Specifically, they preferred ending their quest for the ideal apartment after seeing more, rather than fewer, apartments, so that the length of the search exceeds that available within the cheaper subscription. Other scenarios produced similar results. We conclude that people may sometimes prefer to be wasteful in order to avoid feeling wasteful.

Suggested Citation

  • Ro'i Zultan & Maya Bar-Hillel & Nitsan Guy, 2011. "When being wasteful appears better than feeling wasteful," Jena Economics Research Papers 2011-002, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    • Handle: RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2011-002
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    File URL: https://oweb.b67.uni-jena.de/Papers/jerp2011/wp_2011_002.pdf
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    waste aversion; mental accounting; violation of dominance; counterfactual; regret;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

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