People find it appealing to have more options to choose from, but the provision of choice often leads to adverse consequences for decision makers’ motivation, satisfaction, and willingness to act. We propose that the effect of the number of choice options on willingness to purchase is moderated by people’s subjective knowledge (SK). The results of three studies provide converging evidence that, paradoxically, people who feel unknowledgeable (low-SK people) in a certain domain are especially willing to purchase when more choice options are available, which is consistent with the notion of “more is better.” This pattern is reversed for people who feel knowledgeable (high-SK people), which is consistent with prior evidence for choice overload. We also show that this pattern is influenced by the informativeness of the features of the available choice options and that subjective knowledge mediates this effect.

The authors propose that attempts to increase consumers’ objective knowledge (OK) regarding financial instruments can deter willingness to invest when such attempts diminish consumers’ subjective knowledge (SK). In four studies, the authors use different SK manipulations and investment products to show that investment decisions are influenced by SK, independent of OK. Specifically, they find that (1) willingness to pursue a risky investment increases when SK is high (vs. low) relative to a prior investment choice (Study 1); (2) willingness to enroll in a retirement saving program is enhanced by asking consumers an easy (vs. difficult) question about finance, thereby increasing SK (Study 2); (3) technically elaborating information about a mutual fund diminishes SK regarding that investment and decreases choice of that fund (Study 3); and (4) consumers invest less money in funds when missing information is made salient, holding the objective investment information constant (Study 4). Furthermore, the effects in Studies 2–4 are mediated by participants’ self-rated SK. The authors propose that effective financial education must focus not only on imparting relevant information and enhancing OK but also on promoting higher levels of SK.

Abstract Online shopping cart abandonment is widespread, causing major losses in potential revenues for e-commerce companies. We expand efforts to mitigate cart abandonment by investigating how the cart’s product composition affects abandonment and testing easy-to-implement interventions. We hypothesize that consumers are more likely to abandon carts containing a higher proportion of hedonic relative to utilitarian products. This cart composition effect arises because carts containing higher hedonic-to-utilitarian product ratios are perceived as more hedonic overall, increasing consumer guilt regarding cart purchase and the likelihood of cart abandonment. Analyses of two large-scale field datasets and four controlled experiments provide converging evidence for the cart composition effect (studies 1A to 3) and the mediating role of perceived hedonism and consumer guilt (studies 2, 4A and 4B). Substantively, we offer empirical support for a practical and easily implemented intervention: using e-commerce recommendation systems to reduce cart abandonment by suggesting utilitarian items (studies 4A and 4B). Our findings suggest that recommendation systems may serve as an effective tool for reducing cart abandonment and underscore the importance of incorporating hedonic value considerations into recommendation algorithms. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of our findings for the development of more effective marketing strategies and improving online conversion rates.