Repayment Concentration and Consumer Motivation to Get Out of Debt
Repayment Concentration and Consumer Motivation to Get Out of Debt
复制标题
还款集中度和消费者摆脱债务的动机
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2016
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
G. Häubl
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Keri L. Kettle;Remi Trudel;Simon J. Blanchard;G. Häubl
许多负债的消费者持有多张信用卡，卡上有大量余额，但在每个还款期结束时，他们没有足够的收入来还清这些余额。随着时间的推移，在管理债务时，这些消费者必须决定如何在债务账户中分配还款。这项研究探讨了不同的每月还款分配，从完全集中到一个债务账户（即，集中策略）平均分散在所有债务账户上（即，分散策略），影响消费者偿还债务的动机。对有多个债务账户的负债消费者的实地研究和三个实验的证据表明，集中（与分散）的还款策略往往会提高消费者摆脱债务的动机，使他们更积极地偿还债务。重要的是，当还款集中在消费者最小的账户上时，这种激励效应最为明显，因为消费者倾向于从任何一个账户中最大比例的余额减少（偿还的初始余额的比例）来推断债务偿还的总体进展。这些发现推进了我们对消费者如何偿还债务的理解，并有助于确定债务偿还策略影响消费者摆脱债务动机的心理过程。
Many indebted consumers carry multiple credit cards with significant balances and do not generate enough income to pay off these balances in full at the end of each repayment period. In managing their debt over time, these consumers must decide how to allocate repayments across their debt accounts. This research examines how different monthly repayment allocations, varying from entirely concentrated into one debt account (i.e., a concentrated strategy) to equally dispersed across all debt accounts (i.e., a dispersed strategy), influence consumers’ motivation to repay their debts. Evidence from a field study of indebted consumers with multiple debt accounts and from three experiments shows that concentrated (vs. dispersed) repayment strategies tend to boost consumers’ motivation to become debt free, leading them to repay their debts more aggressively. Importantly, this motivating effect is most pronounced when the repayments are concentrated into consumers’ smallest accounts because consumers tend to infer overall progress in debt repayment from the greatest proportional balance reduction (proportion of starting balance repaid) within any one account. These findings advance our understanding of how consumers repay their debts and help pinpoint the psychological process by which debt repayment strategies affect consumers’ motivation to get out of debt.