Management and Marketing - Theses
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ItemDriven by Desire: Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Power( 2023-02)Power is an essential part of societal functioning. Yet only limited research has focused on why different power holders seem to hold diverse views of the purpose of power, leading to divergent paths over time. Existing research revolves around the subjective feeling of power, but I argue that different purposes and paths reflect differences in why people originally seek power. This thesis is designed as an anthology of two research papers; it represents a unified set of ideas and I develop these ideas with an overall introduction and a general discussion. However, the two papers will be submitted independently for publication and therefore Chapters 2 and 3 should be read as distinct work. Chapter 2 develops the Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Power Theory, which posits that people are motivated to seek power either for the short-term benefits it provides (hedonic motive for power) or for meaningful longer-term outcomes (eudaimonic motive for power). In Chapter 3, I develop and validate a power motivation scale using 3,573 participants across 5 phases. The scale demonstrates good psychometric properties, convergent and discriminant validity, and is situated in a network of relevant constructs. In a predictive validity study, I show that motives for power are vital in predicting attention and choice. Taken together, this thesis presents a compelling argument for understanding the trajectory of power through the study of motives and demonstrates that the motive for seeking power predicts a power holder’s choices. This perspective could improve our understanding on various decisions related to power, including consumer behavior around saving, spending and investment.
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ItemHow the qualities of cash affect negotiation, tipping, spending, and saving( 2021)Cash is still crucial to billions of people world-wide. Despite this ubiquity, research on money has predominantly focused on the question of quantity (how much money?) over the question of quality (what kind of money?) when determining how money is used. Yet, some evidence suggests that the quality of money, and the qualities of cash in particular, matter to people’s behaviour. Given the practical importance of cash and the potential for important conceptual contribution, I examine how the qualities of cash—its form and physical properties—affect its fundamental uses: negotiation, tipping, spending, and saving. This thesis contains three papers and fifteen experiments examining how the qualities of cash affect usage behaviour. In paper 1, I show that people consider the quality of the money in a negotiated offer just as they consider quantity. Specifically, I find that people even reject 50:50 financial splits (equal quantity) when they are to receive inferior money (i.e., smaller denominations) relative to their negotiation partner (who receives larger denominations) at a greater rate than when both receive money of the same quality (i.e., same denomination). I thereby open up an avenue for a new line of research on how the quality of resources affects fairness perceptions in negotiations and provide practical guidance for negotiators. In paper 2, I examine how smaller and larger denominations affect consumer tipping. In finding that consumers are less likely to tip with smaller (vs. larger) denominations, I contribute support for a reversal of the denomination effect to the literature on the physical characteristics of money, the potential for embarrassment as an inhibitor to tipping, and actionable guidance on how tipping can be encouraged to improve the financial wellbeing of service workers. Finally, in paper 3, I identify and establish an entirely new qualitative factor of cash that affects consumer behaviour. Specifically, I examine how the two fundamental physical forms of cash—coins and banknotes—affect consumer spending and thereby also their saving. In finding that coins are more of a pain to keep than equivalent banknotes, I contribute the pain of holding as a counterpoint to the pain of paying, advancing the form (coins vs. banknotes) of cash as an important determinant of spending behaviour to literature on the physical characteristics of cash. The pain of holding is furthermore identified as a novel reason for under-saving. The aggregate findings of these papers emphasise the importance of the qualities of cash to financial decision-making, contribute to the literatures on the physical characteristics of money, the pain of paying, embarrassment, and fairness, and have important practical implications for the vast number of people receiving and using cash on a day-to-day basis across a variety of contexts.