Resource Scarcity and Consumer Preference: Some Empirical Findings and a Theoretical Framework

Topic:

Resource Scarcity and Consumer Preference: Some Empirical Findings and a Theoretical Framework

Time&Date: 

10:30-11:45 pm, 2019/12/19 (Thursday)

Venue:

 Room 619, Teaching A

Speaker:

 Prof. Xianchi Dai  (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Abstract:

This presentation includes two research projects. In the first project, while existing literature finds that scarcity makes people focus on their self-interest, we show that scarcity makes people more concerned about reducing waste, which in turn may increase prosocial behavior. That is, under situations when there is waste involved, people under a scarcity mind-set are more likely to make decisions to avoid waste. When the waste avoidance concern is in conflict with self-interest, people high in resource scarcity may choose to incur additional cost to reduce waste, thus exhibiting altruistic behavior. In the second project, we find that resource scarcity systematically affects people’ taste preference. We show the effect and test the underlying psychological processes with secondary data, survey data, and lab experiments. We discuss the implications of our findings to business, and society in general.