Scarcity effects on desirability: Mediated by assumed expensiveness?

Scarcity Effects on Desirability: Mediated by Assumed Expensiveness?

Traditional micro-economic theory assumes that consumer preferences are independent of market forces like supply, demand, and price. However, this assumption is inconsistent with psychological research on commodity theory (Brock 1968). This research has found that scarcity enhances the desirability of experiences and objects. Two studies were conducted to test the possibility that these scarcit...

The Psychological Effects of Perceived Scarcity on Consumers’ Buying Behavior

The Effects of Frustration and Social Desirability on Heterosexual Attraction

Race and recession: Effects of economic scarcity on racial discrimination.

When the economy declines, existing racial disparities typically expand, suggesting that economic scarcity may promote racial discrimination. To understand this pattern, we examined the effect of perceived scarcity on resource allocations to Black and White American recipients, and tested whether this effect depends on a decision maker's motivation to respond without prejudice. We proposed that...

On Optimal Scarcity Prices

This article contributes to the debate of missing money (e.g. Joskow(2007)) which has seriously questioned the desirability of caps on scarcity prices in markets with fluctuating demand by emphasizing their potentially negative impact on firms investment decisions in the long run. A prominent example are recently liberalized electricity markets, where competition authorities have imposed caps i...