Theses and Dissertations Collection

Sunk cost errors occur when a decision maker allows a previous investment of time, effort or money to impact a current decision. The findings in regard to sunk cost of money have been fairly robust, as decision makers often allow past monetary investments to impact decisions about future investments (Arkes & Blumer, 1985; Roth, Robbert, & Straus, 2015). However, the literature regarding sunk costs involving an investment of time or effort has been mixed. It appears that time and effort are not tracked in the same way as money, and that mental accounting may not be the main mechanism behind sunk cost effects for investments of time or effort. Instead, it appears that sunk costs of time or effort may create decision making errors through an effort justification mechanism (Cunha & Caldieraro, 2009, 2010). This current study examined whether enjoyment of effort would have an effect on this effort justification mechanism. Effort that is enjoyable may not need to be justified in the same way as unenjoyable effort. We utilized an online reading task to manipulate enjoyment and sunk cost to determine if participants would stay with their initial choice or switch. No significant differences were found for sunk cost or for enjoyment of the task. These results suggest that enjoyment of effort may not affect effort justification, but more work is needed to fully understand if and when sunk costs occur for time and effort.