Hung-Ming Lin

Effect of Perceived Benefits on Reluctance to Trade

People often tend to be reluctant to trade an owned object for an alternative object. This concept of reluctance to trade is generally called “endowment effect”. Loss aversion, which denotes that losses are weighted more heavily than gains, has been applied to interpret the endowment effect. Specifically, no “reluctance to trade” will occur when no loss is involved. In this research, 172 (90 women, 82 men; M age = 21 yr., SD =1.2) and 152 (82 women, 70 men; M age = 21 yr., SD =1.8) undergraduates voluntarily participated in two experiments, respectively. Results of both experiments indicated that participants were willing to trade an owned object for an alternative object when both objects were of the same benefit type and were reluctant to trade when objects were different. Clearly, an exchange was perceived as lower loss when the owned object and the alternative object were of the same benefit type, leading to no reluctance to trade.

The influence of consumers’ self-perceived health status and need for cognition on food-product evaluation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the underlying mechanisms of how consumers respond to health-claim framing via experimental design. Design/methodology/approach Across the two experiments conducted for this research, the authors examine the moderating effects of self-perceived health status and individuals’ need for cognition on health-claim framing. Findings The results indicate that personal differences moderate the effects of health-claim framing on consumers’ food-product evaluation. Consumers with poor health status evaluate food product more favorably when the reduced-disease-risk claims are offered. However, consumers with good health status evaluate food product similarly between the two health claims. Moreover, consumers with a high need for cognition evaluate food product more favorably when the reduced-disease-risk claims are used, whereas consumers with a low need for cognition evaluate food product more favorably when the enhance function claims are used. Practical implications This research provides that reduced-disease-risk claims may be the better communication message used to persuade consumers no matter they rate themselves as poor health status or good health status. Moreover, the results of the present research also indicate the importance of market segmentation. Marketers could design proper advertisements and select the appropriate media vehicles for low need for cognition readers and high need for cognition readers separately. Originality/value There has been few studies addressed consumers’ product choice with respect to different health-claim framing. Further, this research presents a new concept of the effects between individual differences and health-claim framing on consumers’ food-product evaluation.

Influence of chopstick size on taste evaluations.

This study explored the influence of the length of chopsticks on taste evaluations. Participants (N = 78; M age = 21.1 yr., SD = 3.8) reported a greater liking for their food and higher purchase intentions when using long rather than short chopsticks. Findings also indicated that the long (vs short) chopsticks caused people to slow down when eating, resulting in greater eating duration and a higher number of mouthfuls. The findings of this study provide insights on research into the role of tableware in food intake.