Table 1.
Soman (2001): Summary of studies and hypotheses and a comparison of original and replication effects.
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| HYPOTHESES | STUDY | DESCRIPTION | STATISTICAL TEST | ORIGINAL OR REPLICATION | EFFECT SIZEa [95% CI] | REPLICATION OUTCOMEb |
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Hypothesis 1: The sunk-cost effect is weaker in the domain of temporal costs than in the domain of monetary costs. |
1 (Theatre and concert tickets) | Two types of tickets are expressed in two different types of sunk cost domains—either time or money to investigate the relative strength of each domain. | Chi-square; difference between sunk time and sunk money conditions in rate of choosing a ticket | Original | ϕc = .61 [.43, .78] | signal – inconsistent, smaller |
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| Replication | ϕc = .38 [.31, .45] | |||||
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| 2 (Choosing a project) | The domain (time/money) and the existence of sunk cost (present/absent) are manipulated within a scenario, describing potential projects to work on to test the strength of the sunk cost effects across domains. | Chi-square; difference between sunk time and no sunk time conditions in rate of choosing a project | Original | ϕc = .02 [.00, .18] | signal – inconsistent, positive | |
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| Replication | ϕc = .32 [.23, .42] | |||||
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| Chi-square; difference between sunk money and no sunk money conditions in rate of choosing a project | Original | ϕc = .32 [.12, .52] | signal – consistent | |||
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| Replication | ϕc = .23 [.14, .33] | |||||
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Hypothesis 2a: If the absence of a sunk time cost effect is due to difficulties associated with the accounting of time, then the facilitation of accounting should cause the effect to reappear. [Alternative hypothesis] Hypothesis 2b: If the absence of a sunk time cost effect is due to the fact that individuals behave rationally when evaluating past time investments, then the facilitation of accounting should not cause the effect to reappear. [Null hypothesis] |
5 (Education and opportunity costs) | The level of opportunity cost (high/low) and education (present/absent) were manipulated to evaluate the strength of sunk cost effects. | ANOVA; opportunity cost main effect | Original | = .09 [.00, .23] | no signal – inconsistent |
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| Replication | = .00 [.00, .01] | |||||
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| ANOVA; education main effect | Original | = .17 [.04, .32] | no signal – inconsistent | |||
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| Replication | = .00 [.00, .01] | |||||
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| ANOVA; opportunity cost by education interaction | Original | = .00 [.00, .02] | no signal – consistent | |||
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| Replication | = .00 [.00, .01] | |||||
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a We provide additional detail regarding the calculation of effect sizes in the supplementary materials “Effect sizes calculation”.
b We classified each effect using the criteria set out by LeBel et al. (2019).