Ellen Garbarino

• PhD Duke University
• Professor (Full) at The University of Sydney

People must often wait for days or weeks to receive test results, price quotes, products, etc. Service providers may manage user experience during such in‐process waits using notification systems that inform users when a response is available or inquiry systems that require users to inquire about response availability, thereby imposing prospective...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether moral licensing – that is, doing something morally dubious after doing the “right” thing – influences the attractiveness of an existing virtue–vice bundle. Design/methodology/approach A prize-linked savings (PLS) account that combines a savings (certificate of deposit) and a probabilistic...

We theoretically show that loss-averse agents are more likely to lie to avoid receiving a low payoff after a random draw the lower the ex-ante probability of this bad outcome. The ex-ante expected payoff increases as the bad outcome becomes less likely, and hence the greater is the loss avoided by lying. We demonstrate robust support for this theor...

Studying the likelihood that individuals cheat requires a valid statistical measure of dishonesty. We develop an easy empirical method to measure and compare lying behavior within and across studies to correct for sampling errors. This method estimates the full distribution of lying when agents privately observe the outcome of a random process (e.g...

Purpose An increasing array of policies have been suggested to combat rising obesity. Regardless of the policy intervention that is selected each comes with a cost in the form of imposition on the public purse, or regulative restrictions on business or individuals. Consequently, potential opposition makes it critical to garner sufficient public sup...

Two commentaries on our article offer interesting and useful paths for pushing forward the research stream we have developed. Jost, Langer, and Singh suggest delving more deeply into underlying psychological motives while extending our finding to consumer boycotting behavior, and Crockett and Pendarvis suggest broadening the scope to consider the s...

The research extends construal theory by testing if a match between the temporal construal framing of a blood donation decision and a blood donation request leads to higher donation intentions than a mismatch. Results show participants considering future donation who read an abstract donation request have significantly higher donation intentions th...

Political ideology plays a pivotal role in shaping individuals’ attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. However, apart from a handful of studies, little is known about how consumers’ political ideology affects their marketplace behavior. The authors used three large consumer complaint databases from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Hi...

This paper addresses volunteer labor markets where the lack of price signals, nonpecuniary motivations to supply labor, and limited fungibility of supply lead to market failure. To address the causes of the market failure, we conduct a field experiment with volunteer whole blood donors where we introduce a market-clearing mechanism (henceforth: the...

We theoretically show that agents with loss-averse preferences facing a decision to receive a bad financial payoff if they report honestly or to receive a better financial payoff if they report dishonestly are more likely to lie to avoid receiving the low payoff the lower the ex-ante probability of the bad outcome. This occurs due to the ex-ante ex...

We estimate and compare the effect of increased time costs on consumer satisfaction and behavior. We are able to move beyond the existing literature, which focuses on satisfaction and intention, and estimate the effect of waiting time on return behavior. Further, we do so in a prosocial context and our measure of cost is the length of time a blood...

Using variations in past prices and product category desirability, we examine the antecedents and uses of three commonly discussed internal reference prices: Expected, Fair and Reservation price. Differences in the antecedents are predicted to determine the relationships among the reference prices. The fair and expected reference prices are market-...

Donating blood, “the gift of life,” is among the noblest activities and it is performed worldwide nearly 100 million times annually. The economic perspective presented here shows how the gift of life, albeit noble and often motivated by altruism, is heavily influenced by standard economic forces including supply and demand, economies of scale, and...

Using a large natural field experiment, we demonstrate that a small unconditional gift (pen) more than doubled both small (survey) and large (blood donation) responses. We find no evidence that the opportunity for a small response crowded out the larger response; asking participants to also complete a survey directionally increased donations.

Assuming individuals rationally decide whether to participate or not to participate in lab experiments, we hypothesize several non-representative biases in the characteristics of lab participants. We test the hypotheses by first collecting survey and experimental data from a typical recruitment population and then inviting them to participate in a...

This article explores how everyday consumers form opinions about consumer protection and individual responsibility in the credit card domain. A startling lack of research on the consumer perspective motivates this current project. Using secondary documents, the authors identify the contributing factors of (1) distrust of card providers, (2) attribu...

Assuming individuals rationally decide whether to participate or not to participate in lab experiments, we hypothesize several non-representative biases in the characteristics of lab participants. We test the hypotheses by first collecting survey and experimental data on a typical recruitment population and then inviting them to participate in a la...

The price-quality correlation is typically low, suggesting market inefficiency. Information is a necessary condition for market efficiency and the Internet has radically increased information. This should lead to improved p-q correlations, at least for searched goods. Using secondary and survey data, we demonstrate this improvement, but only for du...

e-commerce allows for many innovations in pricing: some have been embraced by consumers, others rejected. Using an online experiment, we explore the role of norms in predicting consumer responses to differential pricing arrived at either by violating an established pricing norm (dynamic posted pricing; setting prices based on individual consumer de...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the current social norms of pricing that constrain sellers' discriminatory pricing on the internet. Violations of such social norms can lead to perceptions of price unfairness and swift and potentially damaging negative reactions from consumers. This paper seeks to demonstrate a state‐of‐the‐...

Many important decisions involve financial risk, and substantial evidence suggests that women tend to be more risk averse than men. We explore a potential biological basis of risk-taking variation within and between the sexes by studying how the ratio between the length of the second and fourth fingers (2D:4D) predicts risk-taking. A smaller 2D:4D...

The success of e-tailing highlights the need to understand how perceptions, including body-based beliefs, influence our interpretation of the virtual world. Using an Internet survey, we demonstrate women's body image discrepancy and body boundary aberration influence the perceived accuracy of virtual models, which in turn mediates their usage inten...

The correlation of past prices and demand is commonly attributed to reference effects. Although reference dependence is robust, support for loss aversion is mixed; some find demand more sensitive to price increases, consistent with loss aversion, others find no difference or greater sensitivity to price decreases. Stockpiling offers an explanation...

Experimental evidence on gender differences demonstrates that women are generally less trusting and more reciprocating than men in Investment Games. However, existing studies typically use a narrow population consisting of college students. To test the robustness of these findings, we report on an experiment using 18–84-year old participants recrui...

Purpose This paper aims to examine competing models of the directionality of influences between customer satisfaction, affective commitment, and the customer's perceptions of risk associated with a service organization. It also aims to include the effects of a customer's prior experience with the organization and experience with other organizations...

This paper examines how selection affects trust and altruism in a Trust and Modified Dictator Game. Past Trust and Dictator game experiments not allowing partner selection show substantially more trust and altruism than equilibrium predicts. We predict partner selection will cause sorting in which behavior across partner types without selection wil...

Purpose To examine how people from countries that vary in uncertainty avoidance (UA) use information about product uncertainty when evaluating products. Design/methodology/approach Two studies were conducted that vary in methodology, sampling and analysis. First, an experiment was designed to manipulate product uncertainty through the use of count...

The problem of asymmetric information causes a winner’s curse in many environments. Given many unsuccessful attempts to eliminate it, we hypothesize that some people ‘prefer’ the lotteries underlying the winner’s curse. Study 1 shows that after removing the hypothesized cause of error, asymmetric information, half the subjects still prefer winner’s...

This research explores the influence of consumers’ body-related information on beliefs and purchase intentions toward products for which the consumption experience is significantly and directly determined by body-related information (e.g., feel, fit, sense of safety) when the products are bought in body-absent purchase environments such as the Inte...

A persistent problem in customer satisfaction measurement is a tendency towards high or skewed measures of satisfaction. Consequently, there has been research interest in what makes customers either lenient or critical in their ratings. In this study, we investigate whether differences in loyalty, risk perceptions and category experience define cus...

This article examines how men and women differ in both their perceptions of the risks associated with shopping online and the effect of receiving a site recommendation from a friend. The first study examines how gender affects the perceptions of the probability of negative outcomes and the severity of such negative outcomes should they occur for fi...

Individual-level price discrimination, while not a new idea, is more than a theoretical possibility in the Internet age. Economic theory argues that dynamic pricing (i.e., individual-level price discrimination) is inherently good for the profitability of the firm, because it allows the firm to capture a larger share of the consumer surplus, but ane...

Although the role of reference prices is widely accepted, what reference price people use in what evaluation has received little attention. This article proposes that the compatibility of framing determines what reference price is used in different evaluations. Specifically, it is found that the market-framed fair reference price determines the mar...

Despite the common recommendation that brand names be memorable, little is known about the effect of brand name type on various forms of memory processing such as recall and recognition. As such, this article extends prior research by comparing recall and recognition for three sets of brand names: words versus nonwords, relevant (i.e., related to a...

With the use of field data from a live theater company, this article demonstrates that customers' goal orientation affects not only what information is used in assessing overall satisfaction, but also downstream measures of level of satisfaction and product usage. The study segmented the customers into four groups based on their goal orientations f...

The subscribing customers of performing arts organisations are an indispensable, but frequently maligned source of patronage for the arts. This paper reviews some of these criticisms in the arts literature and assesses previous research on subscribers. Audience studies of the customers of cultural organisations have generally focused on usage diffe...

A multistage process model is proposed that predicts past prices are used to form a reference price (stage 1), the reference price determines perceived expensiveness of the current price (stage 2), and the perceived expensiveness mediates the effects of past prices on demand (stage 3). This process model is tested by measuring the effect of past pr...

Several theories of relationship marketing propose that customers vary in their relationships with a firm on a continuum from transactional to highly relational bonds. Few empirical studies have segmented the customer base of an organization into low and high relational groups to assess how evaluations vary for these groups. Using structural equati...

Several theories of relationship marketing propose that customers vary in their relationships with a firm on a continuum from transactional to highly relational bonds. Few empirical studies have segmented the customer base of an organization into low and high relational groups to assess how evaluations vary for these groups. Using structural equati...

This article examines cognitive effort and its influence on choice outcomes through process-induced negative affect. We propose that an alternative that requires more cognitive effort to evaluate leads the decision maker to generate more negative affect and to choose that alternative less frequently than an alternative that is less effortful to eva...

Using an emerging measure of prenatal androgens, the ratio between the length of the second and fourth digits of the hand, we explore the biological basis of risk taking. This 2D:4D ratio is a well-known sexually dimorphic marker, with men having lower ratios than women on average. In both men and women the 2D:4D ratio is established in utero and i...

Field experiments test whether pay-for-performance programs improve academic outcomes. One open question is how high performance targets should be to obtain the best results. This paper presents results from a laboratory experiment that tests the effectiveness of different target levels on performance. We simulate returns to education by having dis...

The vital role of education on success and the powerful effects of financial rewards on human behavior have led an increasing number of policy makers to propose paying students for better academic performance. However, substantial evidence suggests that introducing external motivators can crowd out internal motivations. Using an experimental settin...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Duke University, 1994. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-193).