Revisiting the impact of affection on insurance purchase and claim decision-making : replication and extensions of Hsee and Kunreuther (2000) studies 1, 2, 4, and 5

Abstract

Hsee and Kunreuther (2000) found an affection effect in the insurance context with a phenomenon coined the “consolation hypothesis”. It posited that people who have higher affection towards an object are more sensitive to its loss and thus are more willing to claim compensation or purchase insurance for the object. In a Registered Report with an American Online Amazon Mechanical Turk sample (N = 1,002), we conducted a replication and extensions of studies 1, 2, 4, and 5 from Hsee and Kunreuther (2000). We found no support for the affection effect on insurance decision-making in study 1 (original: d = 0.54, 95% CI [0.31, 0.78], replication: d = 0.14, 95% CI [-0.03, 0.32]), no support in study 2 (original: d = 0.48, 95% CI [0.26, 0.70], replication: d = 0.21, 95% CI [0.04, 0.39]), support in study 4 (original: d = 0.82, 95% CI [0.47, 1.16]), replication: d = 0.61, 95% CI [0.43, 0.78]), and support in study 5 (original: d = 0.81, 95% CI [0.58, 1.04], replication: d = 0.95, 95% CI [0.77, 1.12]). We could only replicate two out of four studies of the target article. Thus, we regarded the current replication study to be a mixed results replication. Additionally, we found that the affection effect has a greater impact on purchase than claim compensation insurance decision-making. Building on the replication, we found that expressing a likelihood to invest in the insurance does not necessarily imply a commitment, regardless of the costs involved, such as time or payment. Lastly, we found that there are variations among study’s scenarios that have contributed to the original research findings. The findings in this current study emphasize the importance of reproducibility and replicability in psychological science.