Search

Owners value heritage goods, items that connect them to a shared past, whether through their alma mater or their family history. This research considers the impact of heritage on owners who wish to sell such goods. In five studies, the authors demonstrate that sellers have a lower willingness to accept when selling heritage goods to buyers with a shared heritage connection relative to buyers without this connection (i.e., a heritage discount). This heritage discount cannot be explained by ingroup favoritism, sentimental value, or appropriateness of buyer usage and persists even when sellers perceive that the buyer has a higher willingness to pay. The authors provide process evidence that the effect of the buyer's identity on the seller's willingness to accept is driven by concerns about heritage loss. The findings contribute to literatures on sharing, sentimental goods, psychological ownership, and the endowment effect and have marketing implications for consumer goods (e.g., collectibles) that derive product value by connecting consumers to meaningful history and traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choosing when to claim Social Security Administration (SSA) benefits is an important decision for older Americans' financial health. While previous work has examined heterogeneity in claiming decisions, relatively little research has systematically tested the psychological factors that predict early or delayed SSA claiming or the effectiveness of theory-driven interventions meant to help with the claiming decision. A preregistered experiment and three replications examined the extent to which intended claiming age is a function of theory-driven interventions, individual difference measures, and relevant interactions between interventions and individual differences. The interventions that increased intended claiming age were those that suggest that delayed claiming may be the right choice (i.e., injunctive norm, information about the commonality of regret), those that highlight the financial benefits from delayed claiming (i.e., gains framing, focus on benefits to the future self), and those that guide preference construction through self-reflection (i.e., focus on right-tail longevity, reason generation). In addition, intertemporal discounting, subjective life expectancy, and perceived ownership of SSA benefits predicted intended claiming age. This research advances our understanding of which retirees will decide to claim earlier or later and offers practical insights for policy makers, financial planners, and consumer finance organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research provides evidence for a new moderator of the endowment effect: having a memento of the endowed object. Three studies adapting classic endowment effect paradigms and using a variety of endowment objects and mementos demonstrate that having a memento of an endowment increases willingness to trade the endowment and decreases selling prices for the endowment. We provide evidence that mementos attenuate the endowment effect regardless of whether the memento is a separate small gain when facing the loss of the endowment or a small part of the original endowment that is kept. Examining mementos in context of the endowment effect not only provides insight into the psychology underlying the reluctance to part with one's endowment but also other consumer disposition behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of choice architecture, including its adoption in government policy and practice, has prompted questions of whether choice architecture design decisions are sufficiently transparent and publicly acceptable. We examined whether disclosing to decision-makers that a particular choice architecture is in place reduces its effectiveness and whether an understanding of the effectiveness of choice architecture design decisions increases their acceptability. We find that disclosure of the design decision does not reduce its effectiveness and that individuals perceive the effectiveness of specific designs to be higher for others than for themselves. Perceived effectiveness for self increases when individuals have actually experienced the effect of a design decision rather than having it simply described to them. Perceived effectiveness for oneself and others increases the acceptability of the designs. We also find that the intentions of the source matter more than who the source actually is. Important for policy-makers, then, is that disclosure of design decisions does not reduce their effectiveness, and their acceptability depends on their perceived effectiveness and the inferred motivations of the design architect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Obesity is a major public health challenge and exacerbates economic disparities through employment discrimination and increased personal health expenditures. Financial incentives for weight management may intensify individuals' utilisation of evidence-based behavioural strategies while addressing obesity-related economic disparities in low-income populations. Trials have focused on testing incentives contingent on achieving weight loss outcomes. However, based on social cognitive and self-determination theories, providing incentives for achieving intermediate behavioural goals may be more sustainable than incentivising outcomes if they enhance an individual's skills and self-efficacy for maintaining long-term weight loss. The objective of this paper is to describe the rationale and design of the Financial Incentives foR Weight Reduction study, a randomised controlled trial to test the comparative effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of two financial incentive strategies for weight loss (goal directed vs outcome based) among low-income adults with obesity, as well as compared with the provision of health behaviour change resources alone. Methods and analysis We are recruiting 795 adults, aged 18-70 years with a body mass index ≥30 kg/m², from three primary care clinics serving residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in New York City and Los Angeles. All participants receive a 1-year commercial weight loss programme membership, self-monitoring tools (bathroom scale, food journal and Fitbit Alta HR), health education and monthly check-in visits. In addition to these resources, those in the two intervention groups can earn up to $750 over 6 months for: (1) participating in an intensive weight management programme, self-monitoring weight and diet and meeting physical activity guidelines (goal-directed arm); or (2) a ≥1.5% to ≥5% reduction in baseline weight (outcome-based arm). To maximise incentive efficacy, we incorporate concepts from behavioural economics, including immediacy of payments and framing feedback to elicit regret aversion. We will use generalised mixed effect models for repeated measures to examine intervention effects on weight at 6, 9 and 12 months. Ethics and dissemination Human research protection committees at New York University School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine and Olive-View-UCLA Medical Center granted ethics approval. We will disseminate the results of this research via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and meetings with stakeholders. Trial registration number NCT03157713. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When managing joint finances, couples need to have candid conversations about money. But what happens when one partner is feeling financially stressed? Our research investigates this question, exploring how an individual's perception of their current financial situation impacts their willingness to discuss money with their partner. Across eight studies (N = 8474), we found that when individuals experience high (vs. low) financial stress, they are less likely to communicate with their partner about finances due to greater anticipated conflict. The effect of financial stress on communication is attenuated when individuals do not anticipate conflict. Further, we demonstrate that viewing conflicts as solvable rather than perpetual increases the likelihood of engaging in financial communication with one's partner. These findings have notable implications for both individuals' financial well‐being and couples' relationship satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of choice bracketing -- the consideration of repeated decisions as a set versus in isolation -- has important implications for products that are inherently time-sensitive and entail varying levels of risk, including retirement accounts, insurance purchases, and lottery preferences. We show that broader choice brackets lead to more optimal risk preferences across all risk types, including negative expected value and pure-loss gambles, suggesting that broad decision framing can help individuals make better choices over risks more generally. We also examine the mechanism behind these bracketing effects. We find that bracketing effects work by attenuating (magnifying) the weight placed on potential losses for positive EV (non-positive EV) gambles and by providing aggregated outcomes that might not otherwise be calculated. Thus, decision frames that provide probability distributions or aggregated outcomes can help individuals maximize expected value across different types of risky prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision-makers with ideal candidates already in mind often extend search beyond optimal endpoints when searching for the best option among a sequential list of alternatives. Extended search is investigated here using three laboratory experiments; individuals in these tasks exhibit future-bias, delaying choice beyond normative benchmarks. Searchers' behavior is consistent with setting high thresholds based on a focal ideal outcome without full attention to its probability or the value of second-best alternatives; the behavior is partially debiased by manipulating which outcomes are in the searchers' focal set. Documenting future-bias in sequential search tasks offers new insights for understanding self-control and intertemporal choice by providing a situation in which thresholds may be set too high and myopic behavior does not prevail. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]