Mental Accounting of Time: Attendance Likelihood for Rescheduled Events

Does mental accounting of time influence attendance likelihood for rescheduled events? Does this effect differ in short- versus long-term? We examine these questions by experimentally manipulating mental accounting of time and temporality (short-term vs. long-term). In addition, we examine how context, social norms and company affect attendance likelihood for rescheduled events. The fungibility principle states that resources of equal objective value are interchangeable — one dollar always remains worth one dollar, one hour always remains one hour. Mental accounting challenges the fungibility principle by showing that individuals assign different subjective values to resources based on their temporality, leading to systematic violations of fungibility when they evaluate experiences and time. We present three online experiments. In Experiment 1 ( N = 247), we implemented a 2 × 2 mixed factorial design varying social norms (present vs. not present) between-subjects and mental account (same vs. different) within-subjects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 280), we adopted a 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial design varying social norms (present vs. not present vs. alone) between-subjects, while mental account (same vs. different), temporality (short-term vs. long-term), and context (leisure vs. work) varied within-subjects. In Experiment 3 ( N = 411), we employed a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial design, varying the activation of social norms via social company (company vs. alone) between-subjects, while mental account, temporality, and context varied within-subjects. Results suggest that mental account, temporality, context, and social norms significantly influence attendance likelihood, whereas the interaction between social company and mental account does not. These findings advance our understanding of temporal decision making.