Unrelated efforts trigger wishful winning? The impact of extraneous efforts on judgments of winning probability among Ch
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Unrelated efforts trigger wishful winning? The impact of extraneous efforts on judgments of winning probability among Chinese consumers Xiaohua Zhao1 · Yuhuang Zheng1 · Fang Wan2 Received: 13 February 2018 / Revised: 26 April 2019 / Accepted: 2 May 2019 © Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract Through three sets of studies of Chinese consumers, we demonstrate that effort expenditure motivates consumers to obtain rewards, which in turn induces wishful thinking in unrelated domains and events and increases their judgments of winning probability. Moreover, we found that effort significantly affected consumers’ judgments of winning probability when it was not rewarded, but that this effect disappeared when effort was rewarded. In this paper, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings. Keywords Effort effect · Uncertainty judgment · Wishful thinking · Financial risk preference
Introduction Imagine the following scenario: Ming has spent the morning working hard on a report and, after submitting the report to his manager, he decides to go to a nearby electronics store to purchase some merchandise. As Ming’s purchase is being checked out, the cashier informs him that the store is running a lottery promotion Yuhuang Zheng and Fang Wan contributed equally to this research as the second authors. * Yuhuang Zheng [email protected] * Fang Wan [email protected] Xiaohua Zhao [email protected] 1
Department of Marketing, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
2
Department of Marketing, I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, 181 Freedman Crescent, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V4, Canada
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with a laptop computer valued at $900 as the grand prize. How likely is it that Ming will participate in the lottery, and how will he estimate his chances of winning the computer? Will his hard work prior to visiting the store affect his likelihood of participating in the lottery? Put another way, will the effort expended by people in one context affect how they assess their chances of winning in another, unrelated context? Answering questions like these is the aim of the research reported here. The emerging work on motivation and judgment suggests that people have greater levels of optimism in relation to domains where they have expended effort (Reczek et al. 2014). In this line of work, effort is defined as a resource investment, be it cognitive, physical, time, or money resource investment (Huang et al. 2014). People usually invest effort to fulfill some goal that comes along with specific rewards. Prior work demonstrates that after expending effort, people are motivated to get more rewards (Kivetz 2005). As well, effort invested in a previous activity will influence people’s motivation in subsequent activities (Zhang et al. 2011). Wishful Thinking Theory (Bruner 1957; Kunda 1990; Eichelberger 2007; Krizan and Windschitl 2007, 2009; Vosgerau 2010; Dai and Hsee 2013) argues that desiring an outcome w
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