Scarcity Captures Attention and Induces Neglect: Eyetracking and Behavoral Evidence

Scarcity poses challenging demands on the mind that can make escaping scarcity difficult. Using eyetracking and behavioral evidence, we find that scarcity induces an attentional focus, enhancing processing of scarcity-relevant information, while at the same time causing a failure to notice peripheral material, including information that may have proven beneficial in alleviating the scarcity condition. Participants were randomly assigned to a scarcity condition (with a small budget) or a control condition (with a large budget) while ordering a meal from a menu in a lab setting, while their eye gaze was tracked. We found that, compared to controls, participants under financial scarcity looked more at price information but less at the food items, calories and a discount that could alleviate their budget constraint (Experiment 1). In a subsequent memory test, participants under scarcity recalled price information more accurately than control participants (Experiment 2), and likewise those under calorie scarcity recalled calorie information more accurately than controls (Experiment 3). The results were replicated in a larger participant sample, where those under scarcity were less likely to request the discount than control participants (Experiment 4, Experiment 5 as a pre-registered replication). This neglect could be due to limited attention to peripheral information under scarcity (Experiment 6). These results support the notion that scarcity induces an attentional focus on scarcity-relevant information, while causing neglect elsewhere, including of beneficial information that can alleviate the scarcity condition. The findings help explain a range of counter-productive behaviors under scarcity and suggest ways to think about policy design and implementation to better guide attention and prevent neglect.