This research studies an interesting and counter-intuitive relationship between consumer altruism and risk taking. While these two constructs have been studied extensively by extant research, there is scant research which has studied the relationship between them – perhaps due to the expectation that individuals who are chronically more altruistic are very different from those who are more risk taking. This research tests this expectation by formally studying the relationship between altruism and risk taking using a mixture of survey-based and experimental methodology. First four studies test the relationship between altruism and risk-taking using survey-based methodology involving some of the most prominent scales for measuring trait altruism and risk taking. The final study investigates the influence of trait altruism on situational social risk taking. Trait altruism and risk taking are found to be significantly positively correlated with each other, with the relationship being the strongest for social risk taking. Further, the relationship is not significant for ethical risk taking. Additionally, it was found that trait optimism could be the underlying cause for the relationship. Further, it was also found that trait altruism was significantly positively correlated with situational social risk taking. Contributions emerge for the literatures on consumer altruism, risk taking, and optimism by filling an important theoretical gap related to the inter-relationships between these three constructs. Additionally, this research has important implications for practice by informing nonprofit organizations about an erstwhile unknown facet of altruistic people – their tendency to take risks. This opens new avenues for nonprofit practitioners to explore when looking to expand the scope and size of their initiatives, and to innovate on their current offerings in a variety of ways. Additionally, it provides insights that can help for-profit marketers to increase participation in their activities.
Purpose This research aims to study whether consumers differ in their attitudes toward equivalent prices that include vs exclude taxes and fees. In addition, this research will study whether computation ease-based processing fluency and perceived price fairness mediate this relationship in parallel, and whether need for cognition and political beliefs and affiliation moderate the effect. Design/methodology/approach Two experiments were conducted in which participants evaluated two price formats and then responded to relevant measures. Findings This research shows that consumers perceive prices that include (vs exclude) taxes and fees to be easier to process, and a fairer price, and subsequently exhibit a higher willingness to buy. Additionally, this effect is moderated by need for cognition, and political beliefs and affiliation. Research limitations/implications Future research could investigate potential additional situational moderators (such as price type – total vs unit, consumption category, relative sizes of base price vs taxes and fees) and dispositional moderators (such as price sensitivity and tightwadism/spendthriftism). Practical implications This research provides insights to marketers regarding the downstream impact of pricing decisions – such as including vs excluding taxes and fees from total price. Further, depending on the product category and target customer characteristics (political affiliation), marketers can determine whether to include or exclude taxes and fees. Social implications This research highlights the tendency of conservatives to avoid taxes and fees. As such, it adds to the understanding of conservative consumer groups. Originality/value This research contributes to existing research on price-framing research by finding an interesting effect related to multi-dimensional pricing and partitioned pricing. Additionally, this research contributes to existing research on computation ease-based processing fluency and price fairness perception. Finally, this contributes to an increasingly important body of research: the effect of political affiliation on consumption. This also provides clear guidance to marketers with regard to deciding service pricing.
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