Effects of a regulatory match in sunk-cost effects: A mediating role of anticipated regret

Abstract

People are more likely to invest their money, time, and efforts to attain a desired outcome if they have already devoted resources to its attainment than if they did not. This "sunk cost effect" is robust and has been demonstrated in a wide range of settings. Four experiments in the present research show that the effect is significantly smaller under regulatory mismatch, i.e., when there is a mismatch between the decision makers' regulatory focus and the characteristics of the desired outcome, than under regulatory match. This difference is not attributable to the operation of value-from-fit but mediated by differences in future regret that people anticipate experiencing when they fail to devote additional resources to the attainment of the outcome, and consequently fail to realize it.