The Effect of Regulatory Focus and Delay Type on Consumers’ Reactions to Delay

This study aimed at examining the joint impact of regulatory focus and delay type on consumers’ reactions to waits in a restaurant context. Based on both positive and negative utilities of a delay, the current study predicted that promotion-focused people will react more positively toward a delay than prevention-focused people. In addition, previous studies on delay type have generated opposite results based on two theoretical models. To reconcile these mixed findings, the current study added regulatory focus as a moderator and predicted that field theory is more salient in predicting promotion-focused customers’ responses whereas expectancy model is more salient in predicting prevention-focused customers’