An important element in retailing is the use of impulse purchases; generally small items that are bought by consumers on the spur of the moment. By some estimates, impulse purchases make up approximately 50 percent of all spending by consumers. While impulse purchases have been studied in the brick-and-mortar retail environment, they have not been researched in the online retail environment. With e-commerce growing rapidly and approaching $20 billion per year in the Canadian and US markets, this is an important unexplored area. Using real purchasing behaviour from visitors to the Reunion website of Huntsville High School in Ontario Canada, I explored factors that influence the likelihood of an impulse purchase in an online retail environment. Consistent with diminishing sensitivity (mental accounting and the psychophysics of pricing), the results indicate that the likelihood of a consumer purchasing the impulse item increases with the total amount spent on other items. The results also show that presenting the offer in a popup is a more effective location and presentation mode than embedding the offer into the checkout page and increases the likelihood of the consumer making an impulse purchase. In addition, the results confirm that providing a reason to purchase by linking a $1 donation for a charity to the impulse item increases the frequency of the impulse purchase.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This paper aims to investigate the influence of behavioral biases in financial education framing, mental accounting and loss aversion. Therefore, we prepared a questionnaire involving the identification of financial education and the three behavioral biases. The implementation of the survey instrument was conducted in three different samples of undergraduate students of the Federal University of Santa Maria, previously classified as high, intermediate and low level of financial education. The groups characterized as low and intermediate level of financial education confirmed their classification, and considered highlevel group, presented the intermediate grade. The framing effect was seen only in the low level of financial education, mental accounting, in all groups, however in a less expressive in the high grade group of financial education, and loss aversion was present also for three groups. However, through an individual examination for all respondents in the sample, conducted by correspondence analysis, it was found that the presence of behavioral biases is found in greater amounts in the low level of financial education. / O trabalho objetiva verificar a influência da educação financeira nos vieses comportamentais framing, contabilidade mental e aversão à perda. Para tanto, elaborou-se um questionário envolvendo a identificação da educação financeira e dos três vieses comportamentais. A aplicação do instrumento de pesquisa foi realizada em três grupos amostrais de alunos de graduação da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, previamente classificados como alto, intermediário e baixo nível de educação financeira. Os grupos caracterizados como baixo e intermediário nível de educação financeira confirmaram sua classificação, e o grupo considerado como alto nível, apresentou o grau intermediário. O efeito framing foi verificado apenas no grupo de baixo nível de educação financeira; a contabilidade mental, em todos os grupos, no entanto de forma menos expressiva no grupo de alto grau de educação financeira; e a aversão à perda mostrou-se presente igualmente para os três grupos. No entanto, através de um exame individual para todos respondentes da amostra, realizado por meio da análise de correspondência, detectou-se que a presença dos vieses comportamentais é verificada em maior quantidade no grupo de baixo nível de educação financeira.

Titel: Placeringsintresserade privatpersoners finansiella sparande Författare: Robert Bratt & Robin Karlsson Program: Ekonomprogrammet inriktning redovisning & ekonomistyrning Handledare: Thomas Karlsson Examinator: Petter Boye Fakultet: Ekonomihögskolan                                                                                                                                                         Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka, beskriva och förklara på vilket sätt placeringsintresserade privatpersoners sparande i finansiella instrument påverkas av de tre psykologiska faktorerna anchoring, herd behavior och mental accounting samt att undersöka om investerarens belåning och den risk för ökade kostnader som belåning i kombination med höjda räntor innebär kan leda till att placeringsintresserade privatpersoner ökar sitt sparande i finansiella instrument.   Metod: Vi har använt oss av en abduktiv ansats och genomfört en kvalitativ empirisk undersökning där vi har intervjuat personer med ett intresse för finansiella placeringar.   Teori: Vi har i vårt teorikapitel sammanställt teorier uppdelade i kategorierna finansiella placeringar, herd behavior, mental accounting, anchoring och belåning.   Empiri: I vår empiriska undersökning så har vi genomfört sju intervjuer med personer som har ett intresse för finansiella placeringar. Intervjuerna som har genomförts har varit semistrukturerade där vi har ställt frågor baserade på de teorier som har presenterats i teorikapitlet. Utifrån dessa frågor har vi sedan fört diskussioner med respondenterna gällande de olika fält som intervjun berör.   Slutsats: I slutsatserna har vi vägt de teorier som har presenterats i teorikapitlet mot det insamlade empiriska material som har framkommit i samband med vår empiriska undersökning. Utifrån den information som har framkommit i dessa två kapitel har vi formulerat slutsatser inom de områden som studien har undersökt.                                Nyckelord: herd behavior, mental accounting, anchoring, belåning, finansiell beteendepsykologi, finansiella marknader, finansiella instrument   Tack Vi vil tacka vår handledare Thomas Karlsson för stöd och feedback som vi fått under uppsatsens gång.   Vi vill även tacka de uppsatsgrupper som ingått i vår seminariegrupp och som genom opponering längs arbetets gång gett oss feedback vilket har varit till stor nytta.

In december 2019, the first cases of covid-19 were reported in Wuhan, China. Since then, the virus has spread rapidly around the world. In order to try to stop the spread of the virus, isolation has become actual. Except affecting the public health, the virus has caused deep traces in the global economy. A clear stock market fall on the Swedish stock exchange could be observed in February-March 2020. The financial crisis that has arisen is the first crisis many of the young investors, of the age 18–30 years old have to manage. Due to the economic crisis that has arisen, this study aimed to describe young investors' decision-making in the financial market during the period 1 January 2020 to 5 May 2020. The research question goes as follows: What factors influence young investors' decision-making in the financial market during an economic crisis? The study was conducted on the basis of the Theory of Behavioral Finance. This theory assumes that the individual's decision-making in the financial market is largely influenced by emotions and other psychological factors. Furthermore, the theory is based on a number of different assumptions about human psychological and behavioral phenomena that influence investment decisions. The procedure for conducting the study was to make a descriptive quantitative study. This meant that a questionnaire was passed on to young investors and that the answers were then compiled in diagrams and tables. The results indicated that the factors overconfidence, representativeness bias and anchoring bias seemed most likely to describe young investors' decision-making in the financial market during an economic crisis. At the same time, a reasonable interpretation seemed to be that herding behavior and risk and loss aversion cannot describe the young investors' decision-making to a large extent. The importance of mental accounting could not be determined in this context, as the answers received provided an incomplete basis for deciding this. To be able to draw conclusions about the role of mental accounting in decision-making, several issues that dealt with this would have been useful. One suggestion for continued research is to study other factors that may underlie young investors' decision-making during an economic crisis.

The objective of the study was to examine the relationships between the concepts of personal fairness and social fairness and hotel cancellation policies. These relationships will be explored using the framework of Prospect Theory in terms of consumer patronage (willingnessto-purchase and word-of-mouth). This study begins with a brief history of the development of the lodging industry in the United States from inns and taverns to the modern hotel industry that is a critical sector of the hospitality and tourism economy. Current statistics are provided regarding the U.S. and Central Florida hotel industry in order to provide both a national and local economic perspective. The study also provides relevant statistics regarding U.S. domestic traveller information. The included literature review consists of concepts of mental accounting theory, economic utility theory, prospect theory, personal fairness, social fairness, and consumer patronage. The study also discusses how the lodging industry is unique in its implementation of reservation cancellation policies when compared against other industries. Research regarding merchandise return policies is also discussed here. The study was designed to investigate three separate components of both personal and social fairness. The first component investigated the effects of hotel rate price increases and discounts on personal fairness when compared against an existing reference price. The second component studied the perceptions of social fairness on three established hotel cancellation policies. The third component introduces a treatment of distributive and procedural fairness violations as a moderator to observe the effects on consumer patronage for the same three hotel cancellation policies. iv The data were collected from 415 hotel guests staying in Central Florida hotels near the Orlando international airport using an experimental method which provided different written scenarios regarding hotel pricing and three different hotel cancellation policies. The data was then analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), MANOVA and Tukey’s Post Hoc test to provide results that allowed the comparison of effects on each in terms of consumer patronage. The study results indicated that that price increases against established reference prices had a significant negative effect on consumer patronage whereas discounts of the same magnitude had a significant effect only in the middle range. Included smaller and large discounts did not have a significant effect on consumer patronage outside of the middle range. The study results also indicated that there was significant difference in consumer patronage between an Open cancellation policy and a 48 Hour Cancellation Policy. There is a significant difference in consumer patronage when a No Refund policy is compared against both the Open Cancellation Policy and the 48 Hour Cancellation Policy. The study results also show that a violation of either Distributive Fairness or Procedural Fairness has a significant negative effect on consumer patronage for both an Open Cancellation policy and 48 Hour Cancellation Policy. However, when Distributive Fairness or Procedural Fairness violations are introduced as a moderator, there is no significant effect on a No Refund Cancellation Policy. The study and its ensuing results are of importance to the academic community in that it provides additional scholarly support to both Prospect Theory and the theory of mental accounting and the roles that each plays in consumer behavior. From an industry practitioner perspective, the current results provide insight into hotel consumer’s attitudes regarding rate increases/ discounts and the implementation of the three different hotel cancelation policies. The v results can be utilized to provide justification and guidance in altering or establishing hotel cancellation policies that hotel consumers consider to be fair.

The evolving landscape of digital marketing has significantly impacted consumer behaviour, especially among Generation Z. This thesis explores Generation Z students' intentions towards engaging with mobile coupons, examining the psychological beliefs that influence their behaviour through the lens of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the concept of Mental Accounting. By understanding the attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and mental accounting practices, this study seeks to uncover the factors that drive or hinder the use of mobile coupons among this demographic. Using a qualitative research methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Generation Z students in Sweden to gather in-depth insights into their coupon usage behaviour. The empirical findings indicate that while economic efficiency and value perception are critical motivators, social influence and psychological perceptions also play significant roles. Additionally, the convenience and immediacy provided by mobile coupons align well with the digital consumption patterns of Generation Z. The conclusion reveals that the integration of digital technology in marketing strategies must consider these nuanced psychological beliefs to effectively engage Generation Z. This research contributes to the broader understanding of digital marketing strategies and offers practical implications for marketers aiming to enhance coupon engagement among students. Future studies are recommended to further explore the dynamic interplay between digital marketing tools and consumer psychology.

When making financial planning, most people would allocate their assets into different accounts according to its usage, such as setting up education account and retirement account. It seems human nature to adopt segregated accounts for financial planning and it is argued that segregated accounts planning method serves the function of self-control. However, segregated accounts planning method violates standard finance theory that would suffer investment efficiency with unnecessary losses. This article focuses on analyzing financial planning methods of integrated account and segregated accounts in the point of view of behavioral finance. The finding is that integrated account planning method would not only help achieve financial efficiency but help people overcome psychological bias.

Submitted by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2013-10-25T18:05:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissert_31ago_2010 _Cleverson_.pdf: 474989 bytes, checksum: fc7c4a876917d9bfebc1be6559068332 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2013-10-25T18:05:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissert_31ago_2010 _Cleverson_.pdf: 474989 bytes, checksum: fc7c4a876917d9bfebc1be6559068332 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2013-10-25T18:05:29Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissert_31ago_2010 _Cleverson_.pdf: 474989 bytes, checksum: fc7c4a876917d9bfebc1be6559068332 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-10-25T18:05:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissert_31ago_2010 _Cleverson_.pdf: 474989 bytes, checksum: fc7c4a876917d9bfebc1be6559068332 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Muitos trabalhos estrangeiros e alguns trabalhos brasileiros indicam que os consumidores têm um preço de referência em sua mente ao analisar o preço de um bem em particular, sendo este processo interno, externo ou ambos. Verifica-se também que o modo como as situações no momento da compra são apresentados (efeito framing) também influencia o processo decisório. Estes fenômenos têm sido explicados por estudos comportamentais e de constructos psicológicos. Este trabalho tem como objetivo explorar o efeito do crédito (em particular as compras parceladas) e do efeito framing nos preços de referência. O motivador deste estudo foi o grande volume de linhas de crédito que tem sido oferecido no mercado brasileiro. A maior parcela dos respondentes (41%) pertence a classe C que representa maior fatia de renda nacional e correponde a cerca de 103 milhões de pessoas (dados de agosto de 2010) e tende a evoluir para 56% da população (113 milhões até 2014). O método de pesquisa usado foi o experimental com manipulação por instrução. Pode-se confirmar a hipótese de que o preço de referência pode apresentar uma variação onde a sensação de perda é reduzida ao ser transferida para o longo prazo ou simplesmente anulada pela satisfação imediata de posse do bem. Não se pode confirmar hipótese de que o crédito pode influenciar a formação de preços de referência. Contudo, pode-se explorar o tema e fornecer bases para motivar pesquisas futuras a respeito. / Several studies performed abroad and some brazilian ones indicate that customers have a reference price in mind when evaluating the price of one particular good, which can be whether internal, external or both. Besides, it can be noticed the way that the situations are presented (framing effect) have influence in the decision making process. These phenomena have been explained by behavioral studies as well as with psychologic constructs. The objective of this study is to explore the effect of the credit and the framing effect in the reference price. The motivation of this study is the great volume of credit that has been offered in the brazilian market. The majority of the people who answered the research (41%) belongs the C class that represents the largest portion of income in the national scenario and corrensponds to about 103 million of people (information of August/2010) and tends to grow to up to 56% of the population (113 million up 2010). The method of research used was experimental with manipulation thru instruction. It could be confirmed the hypothesis that the reference price can suffer a variation where the sensation of loss is reduced or transferred to the long term or simply cancelled by the immediate satisfaction of ownership of the good. It could not be confirmed the hypothesis that the credit can influence the reference price. However, the theme could be explored and offer a basis for future researches about the subject.

Tax evasion is a serious issue that influences governmental revenues, IRS enforcement strategies, and tax policy decisions. While audits are the most effective method of enforcing compliance, they are expensive to conduct and the IRS is only able to audit a fraction of the returns filed each year. This suggests that audits alone are not sufficient to curb the billions of dollars of tax evaded by taxpayers each year and that a better understanding of factors influencing compliance decisions is needed to enable policymakers to craft tax policies that maximize voluntary compliance. Prior research tends to model compliance as economic, environmental, or personal decisions; however, this study models it as a multifaceted decision where these three perspective individually and interactively influence compliance. It is the first to decompose perceived detection risk into two dimensions (selection risk and enforcement risk) and investigates how these two dimensions of risk, decision domains (refund or tax due positions), and three personal factors (mental accounting, narcissism, and proactivity) influence taxpayers’ compliance decisions. I conducted a 2x2 fully crossed experiment involving 331 self-employed taxpayers. These taxpayers have opportunities to evade that employed taxpayers do not. For example, they can earn cash income that is not reported to the IRS by third parties. For self-employed taxpayers (especially those wanting to evade), perceived selection and enforcement risks may be distinctly different depending on a taxpayer’s situation, what they believe they can control, and what risk they are willing to accept. For example, selection risk may be perceived as the greatest risk for those with unreported items on their return, while enforcement risk may be more prominent for those perceiving certain levels of selection risk. Thus, I believe self-employed taxpayers are the most appropriate population to sample from and are likely have reasonable variation in the three personal factors of interest. I find that taxpayers do differentiate between selection and enforcement risks but the difference only manifests for taxpayers in certain decision domains. Taxpayers in a refund position (i.e. conservative mindset) had a greater sensitivity to the form of payment (cash vs. check) and appeared to use this information to make inferences about enforcement risk which was significantly different from their perceptions of selection risk. Conversely, tax due taxpayers (i.e. aggressive mindset) appeared to overlook the form of payment and did not assess these two risks as significantly different. Evaluating the full sample suggests that both selection risk and enforcement risk have a positive influence on compliance. Further, these risks interact to influence compliance. Specifically, compliance is greatest when taxpayers perceive a high likelihood of being selected for an audit and enforcement risk only matters when selection risk is low. This finding is interesting and suggests that avoiding interaction with the IRS is a primary objective of taxpayers. In line with my findings of taxpayers perceiving different risks in refund and tax due positions, the influence of risk perceptions on compliance differed for taxpayers in these positions. Refund taxpayers were influenced by both selection and enforcement risk, similar to the full model; however, tax due taxpayers were only influenced by selection risk and appeared to completely overlook enforcement risk when making their reporting decision. Lastly, the study shows that personal characteristics can also influence compliance in the presence of economic and environmental determinants, but some characteristics only manifest in specific decision domains. Of the three personal characteristics investigated, only mental accounting orientation was a significant predictor for the full sample. When the sample was split by decision domain, only proactivity was a predictor of compliance for refund taxpayers, while only mental accounting orientation was a predictor of compliance for due taxpayers. While I did not find results for narcissism and compliance, my subsequent analysis suggests that individual dimensions of narcissism may be better predictors of compliance than the full measure. Specifically, the exploitation dimension was a significant predictor of compliance for those in a tax due position. This study make several contributions to the accounting and tax literatures. First, this study provides support for a two-construct conceptualization for perceived detection risk that includes both selection and enforcement risks. Second, it answers calls to investigate more comprehensive compliance models and finds economic, environmental, and personal characteristics individually and interactively influence compliance. Third, this study investigates three personal factors that have not been investigated in the tax compliance literature. Finally, this study answers calls for research on self-employed taxpayers and suggests that the IRS will be more successful in increasing compliance by playing on taxpayers’ aversion to being selected for an examination than communicating information on the IRS’ ability to detect noncompliance during an examination.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T16:44:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gabriel Santos Alberto.pdf: 1530144 bytes, checksum: 5d3e547ec9c1168ac27b5519e48cd67d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09-24 / The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the theory of psychological types and the decision-making, focusing on behavioral biases, anchoring, overconfidence, representativeness, mental accounting and loss aversion. A questionnaire was developed and 319 valid responses were obtained. We used descriptive statistics, parametric and nonparametric tests, and structural equation modeling, using IBM SPSS Statistics and AMOS. The results show that decision-making is influenced by the dimension extraversion-introversion, sensation-intuition, thinking-feeling, judgment-perception, gender, education, income and age. The extraversion-introversion dimension influence on the anchoring and loss aversion bias, sensation-intuition on the representativeness bias; thinking-feeling on the overconfidence, representativeness and loss aversion bias; judgment-perception on the overconfidence, representativeness, mental accounting and loss aversion bias; gender on the anchoring, overconfidence, representativeness, mental accounting and loss aversion bias; education on the overconfidence, representativeness and loss aversion bias; income on the anchoring, overconfidence, representativeness, mental accounting and loss aversion bias, and age on the anchoring, overconfidence, representativeness and mental accounting bias. This work contributes adding new evidence that behavior of decision makers is influenced by psychological types and therefore bias is possible to be mitigated / O objetivo do trabalho foi verificar a relação entre a teoria dos tipos psicológicos e as decisões dos indivíduos, sob a luz dos vieses comportamentais, ancoragem, excesso de confiança, representatividade, contabilidade mental e aversão a perdas. Foi elaborado um questionário e foram obtidas 319 respostas válidas. Utilizou-se de análises descritivas, teste paramétrico, não paramétrico e modelagem de equações estruturais, utilizando o IBM SPSS Statistics e o AMOS. Os resultados mostram que as tomadas de decisões são influenciadas pela dimensão extroversão-introversão, sensação-intuição, pensamento-sentimento, julgamento-percepção, gênero, escolaridade, renda e idade. A dimensão extroversão-introversão influencia no viés ancoragem e aversão a perdas; a sensação-intuição no viés representatividade, o pensamento-sentimento no viés excesso de confiança, representatividade e aversão a perdas; o julgamento-percepção no viés excesso de confiança, representatividade, contabilidade mental e aversão a perdas; o gênero no viés ancoragem, excesso de confiança, representatividade, contabilidade mental e aversão a perdas; a escolaridade com o viés excesso de confiança, representatividade e aversão a perdas; a renda com o viés ancoragem, excesso de confiança, representatividade, contabilidade mental e aversão a perdas, e a idade com o viés ancoragem, excesso de confiança, representatividade e contabilidade mental. O presente trabalho contribui agregando novas evidências da influência dos tipos psicológicos no comportamento dos tomadores de decisão, que certos tipos psicológicos estão mais propensos a certos vieses comportamentais, e, assim sendo, há possibilidade de mitigar os vieses, seja na esfera corporativa ou governamental