Getting a feel for price affect: A conceptual framework and empirical investigation of consumers' emotional responses to price information

Behavioral pricing research is cognitively biased. Therefore, the research agenda for this paper is to examine consumers' emotional responses to price information, or price affect. A conceptual framework of price affect based on appraisal theory is proposed. Moreover, a psychometric measure of price affect capturing positive and negative emotions is derived. A field experiment involving N = 1533 consumers reveals that a price increase leads to changes in price affect. Also, negative price affect is related to passive consumer behavior, whereas positive price affect is associated with proactive consumer behavior. Yet, a price increase reduces the importance of price affect in predicting consumer behavior. In addition, both price cognitions and price affect mediate the effect of a price increase on consumer behavior. Consistent with appraisal theory, a price increase exerts its causal influence on price affect through changes in price cognitions. Similarly, price affect mediates the effect of price cognitions on consumer behavior. Finally, price affect improves the prediction of consumer behavior beyond price cognitions. Results suggest that price affect is a stand alone, previously overlooked predictor of consumer behavior. Implications are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Patrick Rössler nach Erfurt berufen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Accurate environmental bioindication in floodplains in spite of an extreme flood event

The ecological reaction of species on environmental factors can differ both, temporally and geographically. Therefore, bioindicator systems must be shown to remain accurate at different places and points of time. Extreme events pose challenges for testing this robustness, which has not yet been explored systematically. The unique opportunity of the extreme flooding of the river Elbe in August 2002 was used for such a test. The bioindicator system for mean groundwater depth during the vegetation period and annual duration of inundation in floodplains studied here was developed with data collected in 1999. Data from 2003 were used to analyse the dependence of the bioindication results on the humidity of the study plots and taxonomic group (plants, molluscs and carabid beetles). For the duration of inundation, the accuracy of bioindication in 2003 was similar to that in 1999, except for the medium‐humid and dry plots using molluscs as indicators. For groundwater depth, the accuracy of bioindication in 2003 was similar to that of the reference year except in the dry plots with significantly lower accuracy for all species groups. With a few exceptions, the bioindicator system is shown to be robust and to remain accurate in spite of an extreme flood event. In conclusion, the relevance of extreme events for the robustness of bioindicator systems differs between the indicated parameters and taxonomic groups. The results stress the need to take into account the limits of the working range and the occurrence of extreme events, when testing and applying bioindicator systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of the state in foreign borrowing by developing countries

The debt crisis that has been rumbling for many years repeatedly necessitates fresh rescheduling negotiations. These debt rescheduling conferences bring together two fundamentally different partles: on the one side are the emissaries from the big international banks and on the other the government representatives from the debtor country in question.