Really Rewarding Rewards: Strategic Licensing in Long-Term Healthy Food Consumption
研究了消费者如何在长期食品消费中策略性地利用奖励机会来放纵自己，发现低卡路里消费者在预期奖励时会刻意增加放纵消费，且这种效应需要事先规划。
Abstract Licensing is a well-documented form of justifying individual indulgent choices, but less is known about how licensing affects food decision-making patterns over time. Accordingly, we examine whether consumers incorporate licensing strategically and deliberately in their long-term consumption patterns and identify reward programs as a context in which strategic licensing is likely to occur. We propose that members with lower-calorie consumption patterns strategically indulge more on reward purchase occasions and that forethought is required for such an effect to occur. A longitudinal study analyzing 272,677 real food purchases made by 7,828 consumers over a 14-month period provides striking evidence of our key proposition. An exploration of the interpurchase time-related aspect of purchase acceleration suggests that forethought on behalf of consumers is necessary for strategic licensing to occur. A subsequent experimental study (N = 605) comprising five consecutive choice occasions provides additional evidence of forethought by demonstrating that strategic licensing occurs only when expected (but not windfall) reward occasions are involved, and by showing that anticipated negative affect for not indulging is the driving mechanism. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for consumers, managers, and public policymakers.