Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract With the rise of environmental concerns in recent decades, many companies have joined the initiative to advertise and promote sustainable consumption. The current research examines how providing sustainability cues to consumers might have unintended consequences of which practitioners and policymakers may not be fully aware. One pilot study and 10 main studies, including two real-choice studies, show that a sustainability cue may delay consumption. That is, in an intertemporal choice, a sustainability cue can increase preference for a larger-later option over a smaller-sooner option. This effect occurs because a sustainability cue shifts a consumer’s temporal focus toward the future, leading to a shorter perceived wait time for the larger-later option. The findings further show that the delay does not emerge among those with strong green consumption values and can be circumvented if firms communicate the immediate need or instant payoff of sustainable actions. By investigating how sustainability cues shift consumer preferences between two options separated in time, the current research contributes to the literature on both sustainable consumption and intertemporal choice. The findings offer practitioners and policymakers guidelines to nudge consumers’ sustainable consumption more effectively.

Abstract Peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces have seen exponential growth in recent years, featuring unique offerings from individual providers. However, scalable quantification of visual uniqueness and their impacts on platforms like Airbnb remain largely unexplored. We address this gap by developing, validating, and applying an unsupervised machine learning model to automatically extract uniqueness from images and quantify its impact on demand. We first construct a machine learning model, informed by cognitive psychology, to assess visual uniqueness in 481,747 property images, achieving high accuracy and interpretability. Next, we validate our model through three studies involving various participant populations and methods, confirming that the model’s predictions of visual uniqueness align with human judgment. Finally, we apply this model to demand data of Airbnb properties in New York City spanning 13 months. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between visual uniqueness and demand, with two significant moderation effects: properties with higher response rates or overall ratings benefit more from visual uniqueness. This research provides valuable insights for P2P platforms like Airbnb, highlighting the strategic use of visual uniqueness to enhance visual appeal and market performance. It also offers a new methodological roadmap for integrating psychological insights into the development and validation of unsupervised machine learning models.

Abstract Across six studies, we provide converging and robust lab and field evidence that the fundamental human desire for control motivates consumer engagement in collecting, defined as the act of acquiring items that belong to an existing collection. This is because consumers who desire control seek structure, which is created when interconnected components form a holistic entity. A collection can provide such a structure, as it comprises related items that together create a whole set. Hence, as consumers add items to a collection, they are also manifesting a structure. Indeed, we demonstrate that desire for control’s motivating effect on engagement diminishes when structure-seeking is hindered or when the collection is far from completion. This work contributes to extant consumer research by identifying desire for control as a fundamental motivation of collecting behavior, explaining when and why consumers work toward completing their collections, and explicating the structured nature of collecting. Of practical relevance, we provide implications for the enhancement of consumer well-being; the design, positioning, and communication of collectible products; and the creation of policies regulating the collectibles market.

Abstract Societies create material, social, and moral boundaries that define who and what is dirty. “Dirt” encompasses literal and figurative things—objects, beings, ideas—that transgress these boundaries and thus are “out of place.” Previous research describing how consumers avoid and manage dirt assumes that dirt is aversive. The concept of consumer dirtwork emerged from our examination of self-described “dirtbag” wilderness consumers. Dirtwork reveals the potential usefulness of dirt. Instead of cleaning, dirtworkers redraw dirt boundaries, revealing resources they then work to capture. Boundary redrawing describes a continuum of adjustments to dirt boundaries, ranging from small shifts to complete inversions. Resourcing work describes the efforts required to capture the resources that are uncovered by boundary redrawing. Dirtwork results in challenges and rewards, and offers the possibility of continued dirtwork-resourced consumption. Dirtwork contributes by revealing the process wherein consumers make use of dirt, thus demonstrating the usefulness of dirt and fluidity of dirt boundaries. Dirtwork provides a useful lens for understanding consumer behaviors that do not aspire or cannot conform to socially-imposed cleanliness rules, including stigmatized, mundane, and extraordinary consumption. Dirtwork challenges assumptions that clean is good, socially-valuable, safe, and sustainable, and implicit associations of dirt with danger, stigma, and unsustainability.

Abstract Numerical information can be communicated using different number formats, such as digits (“5”) or number words (“five”). For example, a battery product may claim to last for “5 hours” or “five hours.” And while these two formats are used interchangeably in the marketplace, it is not clear how they influence consumer judgments and behavior. Via six experimental studies, two online ad campaigns, and one large secondary dataset analysis, we find that digits, compared to number words, positively affect consumer behavior. We refer to this phenomenon as the number format effect. We further show that the number format effect occurs because consumers feel that digits (vs. number words) are the right way to present numerical information: digits lead to a sense of feeling right that then affects consumer behavior. Finally, we show that the number format effect is amplified when credibility of the source of information is low, and attenuated when source credibility is high. The current research advances knowledge of how numerical information influences consumer judgments and behavior and carries important implications for marketers and policymakers as they communicate numerical information to consumers.

Abstract Non-informational cues, such as facial expressions, can significantly influence judgments and interpersonal impressions. While past research has explored how smiling affects business outcomes in offline or in-store contexts, relatively less is known about how smiling influences consumer choice in e-commerce settings when there is no face-to-face interaction. In this article, we use a longitudinal Airbnb dataset and a facial attribute classifier to quantify the effect of a smile in the host’s profile photo on property demand and identify factors that influence when a host’s smile is likely to have the biggest effect. A smile in the host’s profile photo increases property demand by 3.5% on average. This effect is moderated by a variety of host and property characteristics that provide evidence for the role of uncertainty underlying why smiling increases demand. Specifically, when there is greater uncertainty regarding either the quality of the accommodations or the interaction with the host, a host’s smile will have a greater effect on demand. Online experiments confirm this pattern, offering further support for uncertainty perceptions driving the effect of smiling on increased Airbnb demand, and show that the effect of smiling on demand generalizes beyond Airbnb.

Abstract How do people decide what should—and should not—be censored? Seven studies investigate the psychology of digital censorship regarding user-generated content. Study 1 is inductive, identifying three dimensions—content, intent, and outcomes—along which consumers believe censorship decisions regarding user-generated content should be made. Despite the prevailing practice of content-based digital-censorship decisions—that is, censorship based on whether the focal content includes negative, concrete attributes such as obscene language and violence—people’s acceptance of censorship decisions is determined, in part, by the degree to which the creator’s intent is considered (an “intent-sensitivity hypothesis”; studies 2A–D) even when failing to censor would engender negative consequences. The current research contends that this effect stems from people’s belief that when online platforms make censorship decisions regarding user-generated content, they should abide by conversation norms. Thus, people demonstrate less intent sensitivity in contexts in which doing so is not as conversationally normative—for instance, when platforms are used for professional, rather than social, purposes (study 3). Furthermore, people do not expect the platform to exhibit intent sensitivity in less conversationally intimate contexts (study 4).

Abstract The sunk cost bias, that is, people’s suboptimal tendency to continue to pursue previously invested options, has been found in many domains, and various mechanisms have been proposed. The current study offers a novel perspective for understanding sunk cost bias. Drawing on previous findings suggesting that sunk cost bias may be adaptive and promoted by fundamental motives, it is theorized that sunk cost bias may be a goal-oriented behavior in the mating domain and that this bias can extend to consumption domains (e.g., product/service with nonrefundable deposits, lotteries earned through prior effort, loyalty program memberships obtained through previous purchases) when mating cues are salient. One field study and seven experiments (six of which were pre-registered) demonstrated that mating cues strengthen an implemental mindset among men (vs. women). Consequently, men exhibit a stronger sunk cost bias in consumption when mating cues are salient. However, this effect was not found among women due to differences in their mating tactics. In addition, this article distinguishes sunk cost effect from status quo bias and rules out multiple alternative explanations for the results (including affect, overconfidence, the investment-payoff link, persistence, perceived morality, shame, guilt, and disgust associated with abandoning the original option).

Abstract Brands and retailers often offer different aesthetic versions of the same base product, which vary from visually simple to visually complex. How should managers price these different aesthetic versions of the same base product? This research provides insights for such decisions through uncovering a novel consumer lay belief about the relationship between visual complexity and production costs. Consumers associate simple (vs. complex) visual aesthetics with lower production costs when evaluating different aesthetic versions of a product. This lay belief occurs in joint evaluation mode but is mitigated in separate evaluation mode. An important downstream implication of this lay belief is that consumers’ willingness to pay is lower for visually simple (vs. complex) versions. This gap in willingness to pay occurs even when consumers like both product versions or aesthetics equally, and it is only eliminated when consumers like the visually simple version substantially more than the complex version. Finally, reducing the diagnosticity of the lay belief by disclosing information that the two versions took similar amounts of production time and effort reduces the gap in willingness to pay between visually simple (vs. complex) versions.

Abstract Popular brands like Wendy’s, Postmates, and RyanAir have gained notoriety by making fun of their consumers, but is this an effective strategy to build strong consumer relationships? Across 11 (seven pre-registered) studies, using lab data, field data, and a variety of analytical approaches, the current research demonstrates that teasing communication increases consumer engagement with and connection to the brand compared to merely funny or neutral communication. These effects occur because consumers anthropomorphize brands more when they use teasing communication. This leads to greater engagement with brand messages and greater self-brand connection (SBC). We also leverage the interpersonal teasing literature to distinguish between prosocial and antisocial teases and highlight an important boundary condition. Specifically, we demonstrate that while prosocial teasing evokes a positive human schema, antisocial teasing, although still anthropomorphic, activates a negative human schema, which reduces connection to the brand. As a result, antisocial teases lose their relational advantage over purely funny communication. This work contributes to the streams of research on brand humor, anthropomorphism, and consumer–brand relationships. It also provides actionable implications by demonstrating a novel antecedent to consumer–brand connection and the boundaries within which these positive effects are expected to occur.