“…In general, escalation of commitment encompasses a wide range of business-related decisions, from decisions made by owner-managers of private family firms (Woods et al, 2012) to project management (Whyte, 1986), ethical decision-making processes (Street et al, 1997), new product development (Schmidt and Calantone, 2002) and consumers' decisions (Emich and Pyone, 2018). Furthermore, escalation is the result of ignoring negative feedback to continue a previously chosen strategy (Keil et al, 2007) and is influenced by feeling personal responsibility for negative consequences (Staw and Fox, 1977), environmental ambiguity and environmental complexity (Bowen, 1987), the allocated time and money (Åstebro et al, 2007) as well as the individual's assessment of the probability of success (Hung et al, 2011).…”