Revisiting the psychology of waste : replication registered report of Arkes (1996)

Abstract

Arkes (1996) demonstrated a phenomenon of wastefulness avoidance, showing that people’s decisions are impacted by wastefulness, making decisions that avoid appearing wasteful. In a Registered Report with a Prolific sample (N = 659), we conducted a replication and extensions of Studies 1, 2, and 3 from Arkes (1996). We found empirical support for the impact of waste on evaluations of decisions in the movie package scenario in Study 1 (original: h = 0.43 [0.03, 0.83]; replication: h = 0.26 [0.10, 0.42]) and on hypothetical decisions in the tent project scenario in Study 3 (original: w =.23 [0.00, 0.52]; replication: w = 0.09 [0.00, 0.17]), but with no support in the tax program scenario in Study 2 (original: w = .27 [0.00, 0.55]; replication: w = 0.03 [0.00, 0.12]). Our extension employing a continuous willingness measure, to supplement the scenarios’ dichotomous choice, showed similar results. We added a manipulation check extension which showed that the manipulation worked as expected in Scenarios 1 and 3, but not in Scenario 2. In our extension examining reasons, in the successfully replicated scenarios we found that in Scenario 1 utility maximization was not rated as the most important and in Scenario 3 minimizing waste was rated as the most important reason. Overall, we concluded a mixed replication, with a successful replication of two of the three tested studies.