IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wrk/warwec/1269.html

Evaluating the Sunk Cost Effect

Author

Listed:
  • Ronayne, David

    (University of Oxford and Nuffield College)

  • Sgroi, Daniel

    (University of Warwick, ESRC CAGE Centre and IZA Bonn)

  • Tuckwell, Anthony

    (Universityof Warwick, ESRC CAGE Centre and the Alan Turing Institute)

Abstract

We provide experimental evidence of behavior consistent with the sunk cost effect. Subjects who earned a lottery via a real-effort task were given an opportunity to switch to a dominant lottery; yet 23% chose to stick with their dominated lottery. The endowment effect accounts for roughly only one third of the effect. Subjects’ capacity for cognitive reflection is a significant determinant of sunk cost behavior. We also find stocks of knowledge or experience (crystallized intelligence) predict sunk cost behavior, rather than algorithmic thinking (fluid intelligence) or the personality trait of openness. We construct and validate a scale, the “SCE-8”, which encompasses many resources individuals can spend, and offers researchers an efficient way to measure susceptibility to the sunk cost effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronayne, David & Sgroi, Daniel & Tuckwell, Anthony, 2020. "Evaluating the Sunk Cost Effect," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1269, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:1269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/2020/twerp_1269_-_sgroi.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    2. Leclerc, France & Schmitt, Bernd H & Dube, Laurette, 1995. "Waiting Time and Decision Making: Is Time like Money?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(1), pages 110-119, June.
    3. James Berry & Greg Fischer & Raymond Guiteras, 2020. "Eliciting and Utilizing Willingness to Pay: Evidence from Field Trials in Northern Ghana," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1436-1473.
    4. Ilyana Kuziemko & Michael I. Norton & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2015. "How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(4), pages 1478-1508, April.
    5. Gabriele Paolacci & Jesse Chandler & Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis, 2010. "Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 5(5), pages 411-419, August.
    6. Haita-Falah, Corina, 2017. "Sunk-cost fallacy and cognitive ability in individual decision-making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 44-59.
    7. John Horton & David Rand & Richard Zeckhauser, 2011. "The online laboratory: conducting experiments in a real labor market," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(3), pages 399-425, September.
    8. Nava Ashraf & James Berry & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "Can Higher Prices Stimulate Product Use? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Zambia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2383-2413, December.
    9. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1990. "Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1325-1348, December.
    10. Rosaz, Julie & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2012. "Lies and biased evaluation: A real-effort experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 537-549.
    11. David R Just & Brian Wansink, 2011. "The Flat-Rate Pricing Paradox: Conflicting Effects of "“All-You-Can-Eat"” Buffet Pricing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 193-200, February.
    12. Daniel Friedman & Kai Pommerenke & Rajan Lukose & Garrett Milam & Bernardo Huberman, 2007. "Searching for the sunk cost fallacy," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(1), pages 79-104, March.
    13. Jessica Cohen & Pascaline Dupas & Simone Schaner, 2015. "Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 609-645, February.
    14. Larrick, Richard P. & Nisbett, Richard E. & Morgan, James N., 1993. "Who Uses the Cost-Benefit Rules of Choice? Implications for the Normative Status of Microeconomic Theory," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 331-347, December.
    15. Ned Augenblick, 2016. "The Sunk-Cost Fallacy in Penny Auctions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(1), pages 58-86.
    16. Shane Frederick, 2005. "Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 25-42, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marcello Negrini & Arno Riedl & Matthias Wibral, 2020. "Still in Search of the Sunk Cost Bias," CESifo Working Paper Series 8623, CESifo.
    2. Ronayne, David & Sgroi, Daniel & Tuckwell, Anthony, 2021. "Evaluating the sunk cost effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 318-327.
    3. Białek Michał & Węgrzyn Michał & Meyers Ethan A., 2021. "Escalation of commitment is independent of numeracy and cognitive reflection. Failed replication and extension of Staw (1976)," Economics and Business Review, Sciendo, vol. 7(2), pages 5-16, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ronayne, David & Sgroi, Daniel & Tuckwell, Anthony, 2021. "Evaluating the sunk cost effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 318-327.
    2. Brunner, Fabian & Gamm, Fabian & Mill, Wladislaw, 2023. "MyPortfolio: The IKEA effect in financial investment decisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Irene Scopelliti & Carey K. Morewedge & Erin McCormick & H. Lauren Min & Sophie Lebrecht & Karim S. Kassam, 2015. "Bias Blind Spot: Structure, Measurement, and Consequences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(10), pages 2468-2486, October.
    4. Negrini, Marcello & Riedl, Arno & Wibral, Matthias, 2022. "Sunk cost in investment decisions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1105-1135.
    5. Sadoff, Sally & Samek, Anya, 2019. "The effect of recipient contribution requirements on support for social programs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 1-16.
    6. Haita-Falah, Corina, 2017. "Sunk-cost fallacy and cognitive ability in individual decision-making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 44-59.
    7. Chang, Kuo-Ping, 2019. "Behavioral Economics versus Traditional Economics: Are They Very Different?," MPRA Paper 96561, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Marcello Negrini & Arno Riedl & Matthias Wibral, 2020. "Still in Search of the Sunk Cost Bias," CESifo Working Paper Series 8623, CESifo.
    9. Jonathan Chapman & Erik Snowberg & Stephanie Wang & Colin Camerer, 2018. "Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE)," NBER Working Papers 25072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Gökçe Esenduran & James A. Hill & In Joon Noh, 2020. "Understanding the Choice of Online Resale Channel for Used Electronics," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(5), pages 1188-1211, May.
    11. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    12. Valerio Capraro, 2018. "Gender differences in lying in sender-receiver games: A meta-analysis," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(4), pages 345-355, July.
    13. Lefgren, Lars J. & Sims, David P. & Stoddard, Olga B., 2016. "Effort, luck, and voting for redistribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 89-97.
    14. Tamás Csermely & Alexander Rabas, 2016. "How to reveal people’s preferences: Comparing time consistency and predictive power of multiple price list risk elicitation methods," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 107-136, December.
    15. Gunther Bensch & Jörg Peters, 2020. "One‐Off Subsidies and Long‐Run Adoption—Experimental Evidence on Improved Cooking Stoves in Senegal," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 72-90, January.
    16. Bortolotti, Stefania & Kölle, Felix & Wenner, Lukas, 2022. "On the persistence of dishonesty," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 1053-1065.
    17. Ma-Kellams, Christine & Lerner, Jennifer, 2016. "Trust your gut or think carefully? Examining whether an intuitive, versus a systematic, mode of thought produces greater empathic accuracy," Scholarly Articles 37093806, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    18. Jonathan Chapman & Mark Dean & Pietro Ortoleva & Erik Snowberg & Colin Camerer, 2023. "Econographics," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 115-161.
    19. Ericson, Keith Marzilli & Kessler, Judd B., 2016. "The articulation of government policy: Health insurance mandates versus taxes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 43-54.
    20. Denvil Duncan & Danyang Li, 2018. "Liar Liar: Experimental Evidence of the Effect of Confirmation‐Reports on Dishonesty," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 742-770, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wrk:warwec:1269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Margaret Nash (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dewaruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.