The Influence Of Time,Money And Subjective Role On Sunk Cost Effect

Sunk cost effect is a non-rational decision existing in people's daily life,which has an important influence on people's daily decision,production and investment activities.It describes a tendency that once the people input the money,time and effort,they will continue to invest(even if the invest seems to be unwise).Sunk cost,as an important factor of sunk cost effect,has attracted the attention of many researchers.However,most of present studies about the influence of time and money sunk cost on sunk cost effects basically focus only on money or time sunk cost.At the same time,the relevant researches on time sunk cost is much less,and there is a big controversy on it's results.However,in our daily life,time and money are two main forms of cost existing in people's decision-making situation and which will mainly influence our decision.Therefore,to explore the influence of time and money sunk cost on the sunk cost effect is useful to help people to make rational decisions and prevent the sunk cost effect.In this study,we use the situational experiment method to explore the influence of time and money sunk cost on sunk cost effect and the interaction between them through three series of experiments.First experiment is based on the analysis of the experimental method on sunk cost effect.In order to solve the problem of time quantization,which always caused confusion of time and money in past researches,experiment one tries to explore the existence of time sunk cost effect independently through the manipulation of relative time cost;Second experiment is based on the first one.Experiment two explores the influence of time and money sunk cost on the sunk cost effect further by manipulating of time and money sunk cost at different level;Finally,based on the interpretation of experiment two,experiment three tests the influence of time and money sunk cost on the sunk cost effect under different roles.In this study,the following results are obtained through a series of experiments:(1)In the process of decision-making,the sunk cost effect is caused by the input of time cost.At the same time,the level of time sunk cost will have a significant impact on the sunk cost effect.(2)The influence of time and money sunk cost on the sunk cost effect is independent.(3)Time and money sunk cost influence the sunk cost effect through different paths.Money sunk cost focuses on the material,while the time sunk cost focuses on the subjective experience.According to different individual roles in decision-making,the sensitivity about time and money sunk cost is different.That is to say,as a material undertaker,the individual will be more sensitive to the cost of money,changes of money sunk cost have the bigger influence on sunk cost effect;and as a subjective experiencer,the individual will be more sensitive to the time cost,changes of sunk cost influence the sunk cost effect more.