Deciding to sell: The eect of prior inaction and oer source

Recent research has shown that decision makers are less likely to accept an opportunity after failing to act on a previous o€er, an e€ect labeled inaction inertia. We extended the original research by examining the phenomenon in the domain of losses as well as in the domain of gains. A pattern consistent with the inaction inertia e€ect was found for gains but not for losses. We also manipulated the source of the second o€er and found that evaluations of gains decreased after inaction regardless of source, but evaluations of losses increased when the second o€er came from a di€erent source. Evaluations of the o€er were highly correlated with ratings of anticipated regret, suggesting that the avoidance of negative emotions may be partially responsible for the e€ect. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PsycINFO classi®cation: 3660; 3020; 3920 JEL classi®cation: D23; E49