Spending Windfall ("Found") Time on Hedonic versus Utilitarian Activities

Consumers often gain extra free time unexpectedly. Given the increasing time pressure that consumers experience in their daily lives, it is important to understand how they spend windfall (or unexpected) free time, which we term found time. In a series of five laboratory experiments and naturalistic field studies, we found that consumers spend more of their free time on hedonic activities than on utilitarian activities when they gain the time unexpectedly (i.e. found time), but not when they know about the free time in advance. This pattern occurs consistently regardless of whether consumers gain the time from canceled work-related or leisure activities. In addition, our studies uncovered perceived busyness as a ubiquitous yet unexplored moderator for the windfall gain literature: the inclination to allocate found time to hedonic consumption decreases when consumers perceive themselves to be busy at the moment. We discuss several potential accounts for the effect of unexpectedness on time expenditure, including a perceived fit between the nature of found time (a fun windfall gain) and hedonic consumption, need for justification, and planning. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Consumer Research is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Risky but alluring: Severe COVID-19 pandemic influence increases risk taking.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives to a profound extent. In this research, we examined how the pandemic might have influenced people's general risk attitude in their daily lives. Across four studies (two preregistered) using U.S. online worker and Canadian university student samples, we observed that individuals who were severely affected by the pandemic showed higher risk taking toward a variety of risky activities than those who were less severely affected. We attributed this effect to elevated boredom levels and increased perceived benefits from taking risks among the severely affected group and provided supporting evidence. Data ruled out risk perception, income, employment status, and response biases as alternative explanations. Our findings shed light on the psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision under risk, the role of perceived benefits of risk taking, and effective policy interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).