All rights reserved. 0093-5301/2008/3406-0003$10.00
Tightwads and Spendthrifts
Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. We propose that an anticipatory pain of paying drives “tightwads” to spend less than they would ideally like to spend. “Spendthrifts,” by contrast, experience too little pain of paying and typically spend more than they would ideally like to spend. This article introduces and validates the “spendthrift‐tightwad” scale, a measure of individual differences in the pain of paying. Spending differences between tightwads and spendthrifts are greatest in situations that amplify the pain of paying and smallest in situations that diminish the pain of paying.
Electronically published October 19, 2007
They were so skewed and squint‐eyed in their minds, their misering or extravagance mocked all reason. (Dante's Inferno, “Canto VII: The Hoarders and the Wasters”)
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Online publication date: 5-Dec-2009.
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Online publication date: 1-Dec-2009.
Online publication date: 1-Dec-2009.
Online publication date: 1-Dec-2008.
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*Scott I. Rick (srick@wharton.upenn.edu) is a visiting professor of operations and information management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Cynthia E. Cryder (ccryder@andrew.cmu.edu) is a doctoral student, and George Loewenstein (gl20@andrew.cmu.edu) is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology, both at the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213. This article is based on the first author’s dissertation. For helpful comments, the authors thank the editor, the associate editor, three anonymous reviewers, Dan Ariely, Eloise Coupey, Robyn Dawes, Michael DeKay, J. Wesley Hutchinson, Eric Johnson, Uzma Khan, Jennifer Lerner, Julie Ozanne, Kathleen Vohs, Joachim Vosgerau, Roberto Weber, Christian Wheeler, Patti Williams, Gal Zauberman, and participants at the 2005 Society for Judgment and Decision Making conference in Toronto, the 2006 Judgment and Decision Making preconference at Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Palm Springs, the 2006 Behavioral Decision Research in Management conference in Los Angeles, the Second Annual Whitebox Advisors Graduate Student Conference at Yale, and the 2007 Society for Consumer Psychology conference in Las Vegas. They also thank NBC’s WCAU affiliate, the Globe and Mail, and John Tierney of the New York Times for their invaluable assistance in collecting data. This research was supported in part by grants from the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon and the Russell Sage Foundation, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to Rick, and a MacArthur Foundation network grant to Loewenstein.