Public recognition is usually thought to motivate charitable giving. However, the current research identifies an important context in which the opposite occurs. We examine commonplace donation decisions involving modest amounts of money, which either take place in private, or are observed by...

Although many individuals endorse prosocial causes, little is understood about the factors that determine when people's desire to consume in ways that benefit society as a whole will exceed their desire to accrue direct benefits to the self. We address this question by testing how reminders of...

Academics have shown a growing interest in the effects of resource scarcity — a discrepancy between one's current resource levels and a higher, more desirable reference point. However, the existing literature lacks an overarching theory to explain the breadth of findings across different types...

Extrinsic incentives play a key role in motivating behavior. However, conflicting findings have been observed with respect to the effectiveness of various extrinsic incentives (e.g., a cash reward vs. a donation to charity) in motivation. We propose a novel framework that accounts for these...

Many consumer choices involve choosing multiple options from an assortment of products that serve the same goal (e.g., choosing among products in the oral care aisle). We propose that the number of products purchased in these scenarios depends upon consumers' mental representation and on the...

The authors examine how a reference to an unrelated product in the choice context impacts consumers' likelihood of donating to charity. Building on research on self-signaling, the authors predict that consumers are more likely to give when the donation appeal references a hedonic product, as...

It is well established that consumers' evaluations of brand extensions depend on the quality of the parent brand and the fit between that brand and the extension category. We propose that the relative importance of these two factors is influenced by two key features of a typical shopping...

For many, it is difficult to imagine that sharing used clothes with strangers and/or buying low quality, temporary garments could ever be preferable to owning our own. However, new findings from the Journal of Consumer Research suggest there may be contexts in which, and consumers for whom, this...