Most people think climate change and sustainability are important problems, but too few global citizens engaged in high-greenhouse-gas-emitting behavior are engaged in enough mitigating behavior to stem the increasing flow of greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Why is that? Structural barriers such as a climate-averse infrastructure are part of the answer, but psychological barriers also impede behavioral choices that would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Although many individuals are engaged in some ameliorative action, most could do more, but they are hindered by seven categories of psychological barriers, or “dragons of inaction”: limited cognition about the problem, ideological worldviews that tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, comparisons with key other people, sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and positive but inadequate behavior change. Structural barriers must be removed wherever possible, but this is unlikely to be sufficient. Psychologists must work with other scientists, technical experts, and policymakers to help citizens overcome these psychological barriers.

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The dragons of inaction: Psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation.

A substantial body of research evidence has now accumulated in the reference price literature. One stream of research has identified the antecedents of reference price and has assessed their effects through experimentation. Others have calibrated a variety of reference price models on panel data and reported the effects on brand choice and other purchase decisions. In this article, the authors review the published literature on reference price in both the behavioral and modeling streams. They offer an integrative framework to review prior research on (1) the formation of reference price, (2) retrieval and use of reference price, and (3) influences of reference price on various purchase decisions and evaluations. In doing so, the authors examine the influences of consumers' prior purchase history and contextual moderators, such as specific purchase occasions, promotional environment of the store, and product category characteristics. They summarize the key findings, identify the unresolved issues,...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30166553.pdf

Reference Price Research: Review and Propositions

The goal-gradient hypothesis denotes the classic finding from behaviorism that animals expend more effort as they approach a reward. Building on this hypothesis, the authors generate new propositions for the human psychology of rewards. They test these propositions using a field experiment, secondary customer data, paper-and-pencil problems, and Tobit and logit models. The key finding indicate that (1) participants in a real cafe reward program purchase coffee more frequently the closer they are to earning a free coffee; (2) Internet users who rate songs in return for reward certificates visit the rating Web site more often, rate more songs per visit, and persist longer in the rating effort as they approach the reward goal; (3) the illusion of progress toward the goal induces purchase acceleration (e.g., customers who receive a 12-stamp coffee card with 2 preexisting "bonus" stamps complete the 10 required purchases faster than customers who receive a "regular" 10-stamp card) and (4) a stronger tendency to accelerate toward the goal predicts greater retention and faster reengagement in the program. The conceptualization and empirical findings are captured by a parsimonious goal distance model, in which effort investment is a function of the proportion of original distance remaining to the goal. In addition, using statistical and experimental controls, the authors rule out alternative explanations for the observed goal gradients. They discuss the theoretical significance of their findings and the managerial implications for incentive systems, promotions, and customer retention.

The Goal-Gradient Hypothesis Resurrected: Purchase Acceleration, Illusionary Goal Progress, and Customer Retention

Conditioned Reflexes; an Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex.

Adaptation-level theory.

Bundle offers consisting of two or more products often include a price discount. The impact of the price discount on the perceived attractiveness of the bundle has been shown to depend on which product is discounted. It has been argued that discounts are more effective when they are assigned to the product that will receive the most weight in the overall evaluation of the bundle. We propose that the perceived value of the discount may also depend on a referent specific to each product. Six studies are used to provide evidence that (1) price discount framing effects can be explained by reference dependence and (2) that reference dependence and product importance independently contribute to price discount framing effects.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/380287

The Influence of Price Discount Framing on the Evaluation of a Product Bundle

https://media.terry.uga.edu/socrates/publications/2011/09/sunkcost.pdf

Sunk-Cost Effects on Purely Behavioral Investments

We provide evidence that goal priming effects are context dependent. We show that goal primes encourage prime-consistent behavior when the behavioral context is common and prime-inconsistent behavior when the behavioral context is uncommon. While the prime-consistent behavior is compatible with existing theory, the prime-inconsistent behavior poses a theoretical challenge. We argue that uncommon behavioral contexts encourage the release of a primed goal and, as a consequence, an increase in the relative activation of information inconsistent with the primed goal and prime-inconsistent behavior.

http://media.terry.uga.edu/socrates/publications/2011/09/antipriming.pdf

Context-Dependent Effects of Goal Primes

Peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces, such as Uber, Airbnb, and Lending Club, have experienced massive growth in recent years. They now constitute a significant portion of the world’s economy and provide opportunities for people to transact directly with one another. However, such growth also challenges participants to cope with information asymmetry about the quality of the offerings in the marketplace. By conducting an analysis of a P2P lending market, the authors propose and test a theory in which countersignaling provides a mechanism to attenuate information asymmetry about financial products (loans) offered on the platform. Data from a P2P lending website reveal significant, nonmonotonic relationships among the transmission of nonverifiable information, loan funding, and ex post loan quality, consistent with the proposed theory. The results provide insights for platform owners who seek to manage the level of information asymmetry in their P2P environments to create more balanced marketplaces, as w...

Strategic Information Transmission in Peer-to-Peer Lending Markets

New brands often partner with well-known brands under the assumption that they will benefit from the awareness and positive associations that well-known brands yield. However, this associations-transfer explanation may not predict co-branding results when the expected benefits of the co-branded product are presented simultaneously with the co-branding information. In this case, the results of co-branding instead follow the predictions of adaptive-learning theory which posits that consumers may differentially associate each brand with the outcome as a result of cue interaction effects. Three experiments show that the presence of a well-known brand can weaken or strengthen the association between the less-known brand and the co-branding outcome depending on the timing of the presentation of product benefit information. When this information was presented simultaneously with co-branding information (at a delay after co-branding information), the presence of a well-known brand weakened (strengthened) the association of the less-known brand with the outcome and thereby lowered (improved) evaluation of the less-known brand.

https://media.terry.uga.edu/socrates/publications/2015/01/Co-branding.pdf

Marcus Cunha

Papers

The Influence of Price Discount Framing on the Evaluation of a Product Bundle

Sunk-Cost Effects on Purely Behavioral Investments

Context-Dependent Effects of Goal Primes

Strategic Information Transmission in Peer-to-Peer Lending Markets

Riding Coattails: When Co-Branding Helps versus Hurts Less-Known Brands