Select The Impact Of Partitioning, Upgrading Utility And Decision-making Responsibility On The Commitment To Upgrade

As is known to all,we interact with the surrounding environment and have to make a variety of decisions all the time.But more and more researchers found people are not always rationally when they make decisions,such as escalation of commitment which was defined as an irrational behavior in the psychology of decision making.The topic of escalation of commitment has intrigued the organizational sciences for over 30 years since the concept of escalation of commitment was presented by Staw in 1976.Many domestic and foreign scholars have deeply explored this phenomenon from different angles. Drawing from the theoretical bases of partition priming and mental accounting,the research is to explore how escalation of commitment was affected by option partitioning,responsibility and escalation utility in the decision situation of new product development.The research includes four experiments.In experiment l,we examine the partition dependence of uncertain decision situations.In experiment 2,we examine how escalation of commitment was affected by escalation option and responsibility.In experiment 3,we explore how escalation of commitment was affected by alternative option and responsibility.In the final experiment,we examine if these partitioning effects are mediated by the subjective utility.Finally,our results are as follows:1.Partition dependence is obvious and systematic Judgments made by decision makers presented with either case or class formulations of the same query were biased toward the corresponding ignorance prior.2.The main effect of personal responsibility was not significant.That is escalation of commitment was not remarkable significantly stronger in the responsible condition than in the nonresponsible condition, replicating personal responsibility does not directly affect escalation behavior,which not replicated the typical effects of personal responsibility on escalation.3.Our research revealed a significant main effect of option partitioning.This main effect indicates that escalation of commitment in the no-partitioning condition was significantly reduced by partitioning the alternative option condition:a decision maker’s commitment to a failing course of action is exaggerated when the escalation options are partitioned into multiple suboptions,whereas such commitment is reduced when the alternative options are portioned into suboptions.4. These partitioning effects are mediated by the subjective utility.Escalation utility partially mediated the effects of escalation option on escalation of commitment,and escalation utility mediated the effects of alternative option on escalation of commitment.