How Do I Like My Chances (to Unfold)? Why Perceived Scarcity and Anticipated Hope Lead Consumers to Prefer Increasing Probabilities of Obtaining a Resource

Abstract

The present work examines consumers’ sequence ordering preferences when they have multiple probabilistic opportunities to obtain a resource. In particular, this research investigates whether consumers with multiple opportunities for resource obtainment prefer to start with the opportunity that is least likely to produce the resource and end with the one that is most likely to do so (i.e., an ascending probability sequence), or instead start with the most likely-to-succeed opportunity and end with the least likely-to-succeed one (i.e., a descending probability sequence). Four studies demonstrate that consumers prefer ascending (vs. descending) probability sequences, because they anticipate that this ordering will make the resource feel relatively less scarce, and therefore engender more hope, over the course of the sequence. Contributions to the literatures on scarcity, hope, and sequence ordering preferences, are discussed.

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